Heritability of some Morphological and Qualitative Traits of Rice and Identification of Their Related Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) Using Microsatellite Marker

Morphological traits can be used as signs for identification of plant growth stages and selection indices. Development of linkage maps is one of the DNA markers application uses in QTL analysis for identification of chromosome regions of controlling genes of quantitative traits. In this research, from the cross between Mousatarom and 304 cultivars, 193 single plants of F2 were harvested separately and used for planting 193 F2:3 families accompanied to the parents. This experiment was conducted in augmented design with three control treatments named as Lenjan- Askari, 304 and Domsiah Nourabad-Mamasni local cultivar in six replications (blocks) which F2:3 families were randomly cultivated within the blocks. The studied Traits were seedling height, plant height, culm length, panicle length, length and width of penultimate leaf, length and width of brown rice kernel, rice shape and tillering number. Panicle length and tiller number had low heritability (< 0.2), leaf length and width had medium heritability (0.2-0.5), plant height, seedling height and culm length had high heritability (0.5-0.8), and brown rice characteristics had very high (> 0.8) narrowsense heritability. Eighty one primers related to microsatellite marker, were selected based on SSR maps, and based on the results, two QTLs for plantlet height, one QTL for panicle length, two QTLs for tillering number, three QTLs for leaf width, two QTLs for seed length, two QTL for seed width and two QTLs for seed shape were identified.