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Water is becoming a restricted factor of agricultural development owing to the global shortage of water resources. Screening and improving drought tolerant rice cultivars would be helpful for increasing and stabilizing yield, economizing water and reducing environmental pollution. In this study, 127 rice lines of DII population derived from an indica variety Zhaiyeqing 8 (ZYQ8) and a japonica variety Jingxi 17 (JX17) were used to locate QTLs for leaf rolling, relative water content and rate of electric conductivity under drought stress. The results showed that significant differences between the parents were detected for all measured traits. The tremendous transgressive segregations for these traits were observed in the population. The frequency of all traits in the population was approximately normally distributed with slight skew. A total of six QTLs for the three traits were detected with molecular linkage map of 234 markers, including three QTLs (qLR-1, qLR-5 and qLR-11) for leaf rolling, two QTLs (qRWC-1 and qRWC-6) for relative water content and one QTL (qREC-6) for rate of electric conductivity. Visual measurement for leaf rolling can be used to screen a large number of rice germplasm resources or varieties, which is of importance to screening and utilization of drought tolerant rice varieties.

Percentage of exserted stigmas (PES) was investigated in Hainan by using a population of 127 DH population derived from a cross between a high-PES indica variety Zaiyeqing 8 (ZYQ 8) and a low-PES japonica variety Jingxi 17(JX 17) and its molecular linkage map of 234 markers. Two QTLs (qPES-2, qPES-3) for PES were located on chromosome 2 and 3, respectively. There is no difference between the QTLs for single stigma exsertation and total PES, but the only QTL for dual stigma exsertation located on chromosome 2, whose positive additive effect was from ZYQ 8. Simultaneously the detected QTLs for spikelets per panicle located on chromosome 6,8, respectively and had no linkage relation with the QTLs for PES.

QTLs of three milling yield traits, including brown rice (BR,%), milled rice (MR,%) and head milled rice (HR,%), were mapped using a set of 212 Lemont/Teqing RI population, an RFLP linkage map with 182 markers and a mixed model approach(QTLMapper V1.0). The population showed continuous distributions with transgressive segregation on both sides for all traits while HR had a wider variation than BR and MR. One and four main effect QTLs were detected for MR and HR. Two QTLs for HR(QHr6 and QHr7) had large additive effects. Twelve, five and sixteen pairs of digenic epistatic loci were associated with BR, MR and HR respectively. Epistasis was more important than main effect QTLs according to the mapping result. A complex relationship was observed for epistatic pairs mapped in same trait or among different traits by sharing intervals.