IDENTIFICATION OF ELITE GRAIN QUALITY RESTORERS AND MAINTAINERS FOR WA CMS LINES OF RICE (Oryza sativa L.).

Twenty one premium grain quality genotypes of rice were used for identification of restorers and maintainers for 3 WA cytoplasmic male sterile lines. Six genotypes (Sanwal Basmati, Pusa Sugandh-2, Pusa Sugandh-3, Pusa Sugandh-5, Pusa 2517-2-51-1 and HUR-JM-59221) were found to exhibit stable restorer behaviour for all the 3 CMS lines (IR-58025A, IR-68897A and Pusa 6A). Moreover, Pusa-44 was found to exhibit the stable fertility restoring ability for IR-58025A, whereas Pusa Basmati-1121 revealed the stable restoring potential for IR-68897A. Three pollen parents (Pusa Basmati-1, Pusa-1460 and HUR-LP-191123) exhibited stable maintainer behaviour for all the 3 CMS lines. In addition, 3 genotypes i.e., HURPB-1M-98, HURPB-1S-97 and TBD-2-1 were found to show the stable maintainer behaviour for CMS line IR-58025A. The male parents showing stable fertility restoring behaviour along with the female parents and hybrids were evaluated with the help of molecular markers to establish the presence of fertility restoring genes. The primers RM171 and RM6100 linked to Rf4 gene revealed distinguishing banding pattern between CMS lines and fertility restorers, no such polymorphism was observed for the primers RM315 and RM443 linked to Rf3 gene. The genotypes HUR-JM-59221 and Pusa-44 revealed slightly different banding pattern for the primer RM171 than rest of the pollen parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]