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a ITQB/IBET, Quinta do Marquês, 2784-505 Oeiras, Portugal
b CPBG, Tamil Nadu Agricultural Univ., Coimbatore 641003, India. M. Martins, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Apartado 14, P-2781-901, Oeiras, Portugal
c ENMP Apartado 6, 7350-951 Elvas, Portugal
d Univ. Lisboa, Fac. Ciências, Dep. Biologia Vegetal, 1749-016 Campo Grande, Lisboa Portugal
* Corresponding author (mmolive{at}itqb.unl.pt).
| ABSTRACT |
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Abbreviations: COTArroz, Centro Operativo e Tecnológico do Arroz EAN, Estação Agronómica Nacional IRRI, International Rice Research Institute NPT, new plant type PCA, principal component analysis PCR, polymerase chain reaction PIC, polymorphism information content RAPD, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA SSR, simple sequence repeat UPGMA, unweighted pair group mean average method.
| INTRODUCTION |
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Cultivated rice can be divided in two different subspecies, japonica and indica, that can be distinguished based on agromorphological traits. Indica rice has longer and narrower grains that tend to remain separate after cooking, while japonica has shorter and rounded grains that tend to stick together after cooking. Rice was domesticated in Asia and brought to Europe (Mediterranean region) by returning members of Alexander the Great's expedition to India (324 BC). It was only in the 15th or 16th century, however, that rice became an established crop in the region (Khush, 1997). In Portugal, rice production was introduced by the Moors in the 10th century. Today the Portuguese consume the most rice in Europe, with 17.8 kg capita1 yr1, followed by the Spanish (7.1 kg capita1 yr1) (Vasconcelos et al., 2002). The Portuguese rice germplasm has mostly japonica varieties, which presently occupies 80% of the rice-growing area in Portugal, with the remaining area having indica-like varieties (indica grain type with japonica genetic background).
In Portugal, the rice breeding program was resurrected about 3 yr ago after being discontinued in the mid-1980s, with the aim of improving traditional japonica varieties. Traditional Portuguese landraces are very tall, have low productivity, and are sensitive to diseases, especially blast (Magnaporthe oryzae B. Couch), but the landraces have good grain quality and are well adapted to Portuguese preferences. The objective of the rice breeding work is to use traditional Portuguese japonica rice varieties as the recipient and IRRI varieties (indica varieties) as donors to introduce blast resistance, increase yield through introgression of the semidwarf gene (sd1), and further improve grain quality traits. Presently, all commercial varieties are either from Italy or from overseas. The renewed interest in rice led to the formation of COTArroz (Centro Operativo e Tecnológico do Arroz) in Salvaterra de Magos, Portugal, and included a range of people from producers to those in the rice industry. The working rice germplasm collection includes 176 rice accessions that are maintained in the Department of Breeding and Genetic Resources of Estação Agronómica Nacional (EAN), Oeiras, Portugal. The objective of our study was to assess the genetic diversity of rice accessions in the working germplasm collection using microsatellite markers so that diverse parents could be selected to broaden the genetic base of Portuguese rice varieties.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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A total number of 24 SSR primer pairs (2 chromosome1) were selected on the basis of a previous study we conducted involving seven japonica and two indica accessions and testing 165 SSRs (S. Negrão, unpublished data, 2004). The selected primers were originally mapped by Panaud et al. (1996), Chen et al. (1997) and Temnykh et al. (2000, 2001) (Table 2). The primer sequences and PCR conditions can be found in the rice database (http://www.gramene.org). Polymerase chain reaction amplification (Thermocycler Biometra UNO II; Biometra, Germany) using the SSR primers (Illumina, Inc., San Diego, CA) was conducted in a 25-µL reaction mixture containing 40 ng of template DNA, 1x PCR buffer (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA), 2 mM of magnesium chloride (MgCl2), 400µM of dNTPs, 0.3 µM of each primer, and 1.5 units of Taq DNA polymerase (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). The PCR conditions were set at 94°C for 5 min, followed by 35 cycles of 94°C for 1 min, 55°C for 1 min, 72°C for 2 min, and 7 min at 72°C for the final extension. The same PCR conditions were adopted for all primers except for RM186 where the annealing temperature was set at 61°C as recommended in the Gramene Database. The products were detected using 6 or 8% polyacrylamide gels in 1x Tris-Borate EDTA buffer according to the size of the bands. The gel system used was the Double Wide Mini-Vertical Gel unit (16 by 33 cm), from CBS Scientific (Solana Beach, CA). After electrophoresis the gels were stained with ethidium bromide solution and were photographed under ultraviolet light using Gel-Doc 1000 (Biorad, Hercules, CA). The molecular size of the amplification products was estimated using a 25-bp ladder (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). The experiments were repeated to confirm cases of null alleles and to verify reproducibility.
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| RESULTS AND DISCUSSION |
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An allele observed in less than 5% of the 178 accessions was considered to be rare. A total of 46 rare alleles were observed. All but five loci (RM297, RM208, RM242, RM228, and RM536) exhibited one or more rare allele. In general, markers detecting a higher number of alleles per locus also detected more rare alleles. RM72 and RM481 produced the maximum of six rare alleles, with 16 and 15 alleles per locus, respectively. An accession was assigned a null allele for a locus whenever an amplification product was not observed for the particular marker. Of the 24 SSR loci used in this study, 12 had null alleles in one to four of the 178 accessions. Multiple alleles (2 or 3 alleles locus1) were detected at one or more loci per accession even in standard varieties such as IR36 and Nipponbare. Accessions with 2 alleles locus1 were identified when two different bands had the same intensity. Whenever the two bands had different intensities, the stronger band was considered as varietal norm. Eight loci produced two bands with different intensities (Table 2). Out of these, RM255, RM539, RM481, and RM72 had two bands with different intensities in all the accessions analyzed. RM20A produced an independent segregation of two allelic bands with equal intensity in all the accessions analyzed, which were considered as two different alleles. Multiple alleles with 3 bands locus1 were produced by eight different SSR markers, ranging from 4 (RM574) to 92 (RM335) accessions, with the most intense band considered as the variety norm.
Genetic heterogeneity is a common feature of rice accessions, despite the high inbred nature of the species (Jain et al., 2004). Most of the varieties were derived from pedigree breeding programs. Pedigree selection involves homozygous breeding; this should fix the genetic material revealing no more than 1 allele locus1. Nonetheless, in this study, we found that nearly all accessions had two bands in one or more loci and the two bands did not segregate, indicating the accessions were not mixed. An independent segregation of two loci (two alleles) produced by RM20A may be due to the presence of duplicated regions within the rice genome. Panaud et al. (1996) observed an independent segregation of two loci (RM20A and RM20B), which were mapped on different chromosomes in a subset of doubled-haploid lines. Three alleles locus1 (multiple alleles) were detected in 8 of the 24 loci. The number of multiple alleles varied among the accessions and SSR loci. Several genetic hypotheses can explain the observed polymorphism (Jain et al., 2004). The major hypotheses are residual heterozygosity, accidental seed mixtures, and mixtures of landraces. Mutation and outcrossing also may contribute to heterozygosity in the genetic accessions. In this study, intravarietal polymorphism could not be detected because DNA samples were extracted from bulk leaf samples.
The average percentage of the high frequency alleles was 45.5. It ranged from 21.3 (RM249) to 90.3% (RM84). In general, a locus having a low frequency of the most common allele produced a higher number of alleles per locus. RM249 and RM72 produced the maximum number of alleles and they had the minimum frequency of a common allele, with 21.3 and 27.1%, respectively. All the frequent alleles were from japonica accessions. The most common allele at any given locus among the japonica accessions differed from the alleles in the indica and basmati accessions.
Genetic Relatedness of Accessions
We used UPGMA cluster analysis based on genetic similarity values for SSR alleles from all the rice accessions to construct a dendrogram and used 100 resamplings to estimate the bootstrap values (Fig. 1
). The correlation between the similarity index and cophenetic value was estimated at r = 0.867, indicating a high level of reliability. The cluster analysis showed a significant genetic variation among the rice accessions studied, with a similarity coefficient varying between 0.09 and 1.00 (Fig. 1). The dendrogram revealed two distinct groups (indica plus basmati and japonica) at the similarity coefficient of 0.09. The first group clustered with 87% of accessions from japonica subspecies; a second group included 13% of the accessions corresponding to the indica subspecies and basmati accessions (Table 1). This is in agreement with results reported by Luce et al. (2001) who described the structure of rice from the European collection as almost exclusively bipolar, with 85 and 13% of the accessions belonging to the japonica and indica subspecies, respectively. The remaining 2% aggregated in an intermediate group between indica and japonica groups. In our study, the SSRs clearly showed the well-documented indicajaponica differentiation that was reflected by subspecies-specific alleles at all the loci studied.
However, the results were analyzed using 20% similarity value as the threshold for clustering where three major groups can be observed (Fig. 1). The selection of this threshold is supported by the bootstrap analysis, since the consensus tree obtained by PHYLIP, with the bootstrap values (data not shown) generated unambiguously the same three main groups that are shown in the dendrogram (Fig. 1). Group I contained mainly japonica accessions. Groups II and III represented the basmati and indica accessions, respectively. Group I (japonica) consisted of 155 accessions and had all the japonica accessions, including Nipponbare, a temperate japonica included as standard variety in the molecular analysis. The similarity coefficient among the accessions in Group I ranged from 0.21 (IR68552-100-1-2-2) to 0.92 (Ferónio and EAN N°3). Dourado (DO-88) from Brazil and the new plant type accession developed in the Philippines (IR68552-100-1-2-2) were the most genetically diverse accessions in Group I, with each one clustering independently from all other accessions. The presence of this high genetic diversity in Group I may be because of the multiple introductions of genotypes from 17 different countries into the Portuguese germplasm. Genetic diversity partitioning within and among different geographic regions was observed by Yu et al. (2003). These authors found a clear distinction in the japonica group between East and South Asia, although with a reduced number of plants tested (15 and 8 accessions, respectively). In our work, ecogeographical specific differentiation was not resolved, and accessions from different origins were mixed in the japonica group. Japonica accessions originating from Portugal were also distributed throughout Group I. Although several subgroups were formed, an intermediate subgroup (indicajaponica cross derivatives) could not be identified. However, the hybrid derivatives of indica and Portuguese japonica accessions, VB7, VB1-26, and VB36-49-3-3, grouped at a low similarity level (35%) in their subgroup. The low similarity level in intermediate accessions compared with japonica accessions was also reported by Luce et al. (2001). Furthermore, Dourado from Brazil and the intermediate new plant type accession (IR68552-100-1-2-2) developed at IRRI showed the lowest similarity coefficients (0.28 and 0.21, respectively) and were placed between the major japonica and indica groups. This also suggests the presence of intermediate accessions in the last few subgroups of the japonica group. The higher genetic distance observed for the new plant type was expected considering its highly complex genealogy (Virk et al., 2004).
Group II comprised eight basmati accessions originating from Pakistan (Table 1) and one solitary indica accession (IR56) developed in the Philippines. The similarity coefficient of this group ranged from 0.24 to 0.92, with Basmati 6129 and Basmati 6131 having the highest value. This result supports the concept that basmati rice had a long independent evolution and is genetically distinct from other groups within O. sativa, namely indica and japonica. Based on isozyme analysis, Glaszmann (1987) reported that the basmati genotypes are genetically distinct from the other groups. The same was observed by Jain et al. (2004) and Saini et al. (2004) while studying Indian basmati varieties using SSR markers. The accession IR56 had the lowest similarity coefficient (0.24) compared with other accessions in this group and was situated between the basmati and indica groups (Fig. 2 ).
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The groupings identified by PCA analysis (Fig. 2) were comparable to those identified by the UPGMA tree cluster analysis (Fig. 1). The first and second principal coordinates, namely, Dim-1 and Dim-2, account for 3.23 and 2.67% respectively, of the total variation in the SSR data. Three major clusters were formed by japonica, basmati, and indica genetic accessions. Unlike the UPGMA analysis, where all accessions were assigned to a group, Ribatejo Sel.1, Rikuto-Norin 6, Riva, Sénia, Ribelo, IR56, and IR52 were out of the major clusters and appeared to be distinct from other accessions in the PCA, possibly indicating genetic differentiation. The first cluster included 150 of the 155 japonica accessions of Group I (Fig. 1). A second cluster observed in the PCA had eight basmati accessions from Pakistan (Fig. 2) as in the dendrogram (Group II). The accession IR56 was separated and placed between basmati and indica groups in the dendrogram, which is consistent with the result obtained in the PCA. Although this accession has previously clustered with the basmati group (Fig. 1), it had a low similarity value (0.24). In fact, IR56 was expected to group with indica accessions, since it does not have a basmati genetic background in its pedigree. The reason for the separation may be due to mislabeling or mixtures with basmati seeds. The remaining 14 indica accessions originated from the Philippines and Korea formed a separate cluster identified as Group III in the dendrogram, except for IR52, which was separated. In fact, IR52 was found to have a few different alleles from those of the other indica accessions studied here.
The correct determination of genetic diversity of varieties in the germplasm is important for rice breeding programs, allowing selection of the desired rice accessions for crossing. This will maximize the probability of transgressive segregation and increase the probability that unrelated accessions contribute with positive alleles at different loci. Usually, it is difficult to accurately identify varieties in the indica and japonica subspecies by their morphological characteristics; however the SSR markers used in this study detected a high level of polymorphism and were successful in distinguishing the indica and japonica accessions. Three major groups were identified based on the cluster analysis: (i) the japonica group (GI), which was the largest with 87% of the accessions and exhibited great diversity due to the diverse origins of japonica accessions, (ii) the basmati accessions (GII), and (iii) the indica accessions (GIII). Many of the accessions included in the study are morphologically similar and lack the pedigree information. Thus, the identification of the genetic distance among the accessions will be important to maximize their use in breeding programs. Furthermore, the assessment of genetic diversity of rice accessions present in the working germplasm collection will help the breeders to formulate crosses by choosing accessions with different genetic backgrounds and will assist in the development of gene-mapping populations with greater marker polymorphism.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| NOTES |
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Received for publication April 11, 2006.
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