Molecular screening for the presence of wide compatibility gene S5 neutral allele in the parental lines of hybrid rice

Abstract

Rice is the most important food crop in India occupying 44 m ha, the largest area in the world. The country’s population of more than a billion is growing at 1.7% per year [1] outpacing the 1.4% annual growth rate of rice production. To maintain self-sufficiency, annual production needs to increase by 2 million tons every year. Moreover, drastic depletion of land and water resources due to population explosion and urbanization demands for a promising and economically viable technology to achieve higher productivity. Hybrid rice appears to be the most feasible and readily adoptable technologies to meet the future demands of rice production. Hybrid rice has a yielding advantage of about 15 to 20 % over the best commercial rice varieties. Exploitation of inter-subspecific heterosis in rice is recognized as one of the innovative approaches to further enhance genetic yield potential. A major difficulty encountered in the development of such intersubspecific hybrid is the partial hybrid sterility (HS) frequently observed in most indica/japonica crosses [2].