Agronomic and molecular marker evaluation of selected f₄ plants of rice (oryza sativa L.) under aerobic conditions

A study was carried out to evaluate segregating F₄ aerobic x lowland progenies PAU201/MAS25, PAU201/MAS26 and PAU201/MASARB25 of rice for various physio-morphological and root traits and SSR markers linked to the traits promoting aerobic adaptation. In all three populations, enormous variation was observed for the physiomorphological traits. A significant positive correlation was observed between yield per plant and plant height, effective number of tillers per plant, length/breadth ratio, 100 grain weight, and root length and/or root biomass. Promising plants were selected which had higher grain yield and/or root length and biomass. These were analyzed for the presence of desirable alleles using SSR markers which were previously found to be linked to aerobic traits. Most of these selected plants had the desirable alleles for the markers analyzed.