Biochemical and SSR marker based characterization of some Bengal landraces of rice suffixed with ‘sail’ in their name

Twenty five rice landraces of undivided Bengal (name of all these landraces have ‘sail’ or ‘Shali’ in their suffix) which were popular before popularization of semi-dwarf high yielding varieties, either for cooking, puffing, popping and flash flood tolerance have been studied using biochemical parameters and their linked SSR markers. Except Shali (blackish small bold), and Shali (golden long) all genotypes contain more than 24% amylose. RM190 linked with amylose content generated a rare allele in Shali (golden long). Another linked marker RM251 could not explain the differential amylose content in studied rice genotypes. RM 236, a SSR marker linked with rice bran content shows a rare allele (160bp) in Shali (blakish small bold) and Netaisail. Rabansail, Kobirajsail, Mallicksail and Kakudsail have intermediate gelatinization temperature and remaining genotypes have high gelatinization temperature as indicated by alkali spreading value. Linked marker, RM 253 could not explain the difference in alkali spreading values. Screening the genotypes with RM 219, linked with submergence tolerance in rice, generated 4 alleles, viz., 192bp, 204bp, 220bp and 240bp. Allele 1 (192bp) is present in Hardijhingasail and Sankarsail only, and may be considered as a rare allele. None of the genotypes contained 85% or more similarity between each other at molecular level that suggests the absence of duplication of the landraces. RM 206 generated six alleles although polymorphism information content (PIC) value was found to be higher in case of RM 253 (0.491). So both the markers could be used for diversity analysis in rice.