Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding
Sheath blight disease caused by Rhizoctonia solani is a
major constraint for rice production. In order to obtain
transgenic resistance against sheath blight disease, an
indica rice variety Pusa Basmati1 (PB1) was transformed
with constitutively express chitinase (chi11) and b-1,3-
glucanase (GLU) genes. A single-copy transgenic PB1-
CG27 showed a high level of tolerance to R. solani. Here,
we report the introgression of sheath blight tolerance from
PB1-CG27 into a non-basmati rice variety, White Ponni (WP)
through backcross breeding. In each of the four backcross
generations, the presence of the transgene was checked
by hygromycin phosphotrans-ferase (hph) and b-
glucuronidase (gus) gene-specific foreground selection
markers present in the T-DNA of the PB1-CG27 event. RAPD
marker-based background selection was done to choose a
BC4F1 plant that was similar to the WP recurrent parent.
Morphological characters of the introgressed BC4F4 plants
matched those of the recurrent WP parent. RT-PCR and
western blot analyses confirmed the constitutive expression
of the chi11 and GLU genes in the introgressed
homozygous BC4F3 plants. Bioassay with R. solani a high
level disease tolerance (43 % disease reduction) revealed
over the control WP plants.
Keywords: Chitinase, b-1,3-glucanase, introgression, rice, sheath blight resistance
Year: 2017
Volume: 77
Issue: 4
Article DOI: 10.5958/0975-6906.2017.00066.9
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906
P. Kannan info_circle
C. Parameswari info_circle
K. Prasanyaselvam info_circle
G. Sridevi info_circle
K. Veluthambi info_circle
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