Validation of Seedling Vigour QTLs in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Seedling vigor is an important trait for better crop establishment, wherein limited or excess moisture prevails under unfavorable soil conditions. Many high yielding indica cultivars of rice (Oryza sativa L.) performs well under transplanted conditions, but fail to establish under direct seeded conditions. Keeping in view, present study focused to validate reported QTLs for seedling vigor in a set of forty seven indica cultivars wherein, eight QTLs dispersed on chromosomes 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 and l1 respectively were selected, among them six QTLs (qGR-1, qGP-6, qFV-3-2, qFV5–2 and qFV-10) were present in genotypes screened, which showed high seedling vigour morphologically. The genotypes namely Dinesh, Pooja and Sabita showed the presence of multiple QTLs indicating that these genotypes have inherent capacity for early emergence with high seedling vigour and it may be due to the presence of these putative QTLs associated with different seedling vigour traits. It is evident that cultivars growing under aerobic conditions are having good seedling vigor than high yielding lowland cultivar. These cultivars can be utilized in breeding programme for development of genotypes which may be desirable trait for direct seeded conditions.