Mutational Breeding of Local Rice Sang Tarom Using Ethyl Methane Sulfonate (EMS)

The rice is staple food in Iran. Despite of high quality of local rice varieties, they have unsuitable characteristics like higher plant height and lower yield. Mutation breeding is a suitable method for induction of genetic variation and improvement of agronomic traits in rice. EMS (ethyl methane sulfonate) create point mutation in DNA sequence and causing low and stable variation in comparing with radiation. In this study the effect of the chemical mutagen EMS was studied using three levels 0.17, 0.35 and 0.51 percent on Sang Tarom in research farm of the Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University. Genetic variation on agronomic traits like plant height, tiller number, panicle length etc. was assessed in M2 generation. A total of 17 selected genotypes, eight superior mutants were identified regarding phenotypic characteristics at M2 generation. These lines have less height, more filled grains per panicle and 100 seed weight comparing with the control (Sang Tarom). The average height of these lines is 131 cm while this value in original parent (Sang Tarom) is 164 cm. Other breeding process is underway in subsequent generations based on pedigree breeding method.