Project	Genetic Analysis of Basmati rice
Investigators PhD Scholars Technical Staff Research Associates	VLN Reddy and Sunil Archak
Collaborator	EA Siddiq, CDFD
Funding Agency	Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, Ministry of Commerce, New Delhi

Rice is the staple food for more than half of the world's population. In the evolution of rice and its genetic differentiation into distinct varietal groups, consumer quality preferences have played a significant role besides agro-ecological factors. One such varietal group comprising of aromatic pulao/biryani rice of Indian sub-continent known as 'Basmati' is the highly priced rice in the domestic as well as international markets. Originated in the foothills of the Himalayas Basmati rice is characterized by extra long slender grain, pleasant and distinct aroma and soft and fluffy texture of cooked rice. These unique features of Basmati said to be the culmination of centuries of selection and cultivation by farmers, are well preserved and maintained in their purest form in the traditional Basmati (TB) varieties. The historical and archeological findings infer that the varieties with such unique morphological and quality attributes are not present in traditional rice growing areas anywhere in the world.

Difficulty in recovering desirable recombinants from crosses involving non-basmati and basmati varieties, and reversion often to parental types in the backcross generations, suggest that probably indica and Basmati types are phylogenetically divergent. Phylogenetic studies on Asian rice varieties using isozyme and AFLP markers clustered Basmati varieties in a distinct group. Further evidence of high degree of divergence of Basmati from other indica varieties comes from high percentage of hybrid sterility.

The well-characterized Basmati rice specific molecular markers could serve as marker tags for Basmati specific traits such as aroma and grain elongation. If the markers are shown to be tightly linked to any of the distinct traits of Basmati they could be used in marker assisted selection (MAS) programs. Such markers could be further verified on the fully sequenced rice genome with regard to their location and linkage to the gene(s) of interest. The objective of this programme is to use microsatellite markers to identify QTLs associated with basmati specific traits.

In order to construct Basmati rice linkage map, we crossed a traditional basmati variety Basmati370 and a semi dwarf variety Jaya to develop a F₂ mapping population. 450 microsatellite primers were screened for the polymorphism between parents. Size variation was obtained in 208 loci; polymorphic markers were distributed in all the 12 chromosomes of the Rice genome. We obtained an F₁ hybrid of the two parental strains, which was confirmed by using two microsatellite markers RM263 and RM339. Phenotypic data of F₁ plants were taken. Hybrids exceeded parental strains for all the phenotypic traits. F₁ were advanced to F₂ population to be used as mapping population.

Following qualitative and quantitative characters are proposed to be measured in F₂ population to generate linkage map.