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Background: Sheath blight (ShB) disease caused by Rhizoctonia solani Kühn, is one of the most economically damaging rice (Oryza sativa L.) diseases worldwide. There are no known major resistance genes, leaving only partial resistance from small-effect QTL to deploy for cultivar improvement. Many ShB-QTL are associated with plant architectural traits detrimental to yield, including tall plants, late maturity, or open canopy from few or procumbent tillers, which confound detection of physiological resistance. Results: To identify QTL for ShB resistance, 417 accessions from the Rice Diversity Panel 1 (RDP1), developed for association mapping studies, were evaluated for ShB resistance, plant height and days to heading in inoculated field plots in Arkansas, USA (AR) and Nanning, China (NC). Inoculated greenhouse-grown plants were used to evaluate ShB using a seedling-stage method to eliminate effects from height or maturity, and tiller (TN) and panicle number (PN) per plant. Potted plants were used to evaluate the RDP1 for TN and PN. Genome-wide association (GWA) mapping with over 3.4 million SNPs identified 21 targeted SNP markers associated with ShB which tagged 18 ShB-QTL not associated with undesirable plant architecture traits. Ten SNPs were associated with ShB among accessions of the Indica subspecies, ten among Japonica subspecies accessions, and one among all RDP1 accessions. Across the 18 ShB QTL, only qShB4-1 was not previously reported in biparental mapping studies and qShB9 was not reported in the GWA ShB studies. All 14 PN QTL overlapped with TN QTL, with 15 total TN QTL identified. Allele effects at the five TN QTL co-located with ShB QTL indicated that increased TN does not inevitably increase disease development; in fact, for four ShB QTL that overlapped TN QTL, the alleles increasing resistance were associated with increased TN and PN, suggesting a desirable coupling of alleles at linked genes. Conclusions: Nineteen accessions identified as containing the most SNP alleles associated with ShB resistance for each subpopulation were resistant in both AR and NC field trials. Rice breeders can utilize these accessions and SNPs to develop cultivars with enhanced ShB resistance along with increased TN and PN for improved yield potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is an important cereal in the world. The study of the genetic basis of important agronomic traits in rice landraces and identification of genes will facilitate the breed improvement. Gelatinization temperature (GT), gel consistency (GC) and pericarp color (PC) are important indices of rice cooking and eating quality evaluation and potential nutritional importance, which attract wide attentions in the application of genetic and breeding. To dissect the genetic basis of GT, GC and PC, a total of 419 rice landraces core germplasm collections consisting of 330 indica lines, 78 japonica lines and 11 uncertain varieties were planted, collected, then GT, GC, PC were measured for two years, and sequenced using specific-locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) technology. In this study, 261,385,070 clean reads and 56,768 polymorphic SLAF tags were obtained, which a total of 211,818 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were discovered. With 208,993 SNPs meeting the criterion of minor allele frequency (MAF) > 0.05 and integrity> 0.5, the phylogenetic tree and population structure analysis were performed for all 419 rice landraces, and the whole panel mainly separated into six subpopulations based on population structure analysis. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) was carried out for the whole panel, indica subpanel and japonica subpanel with subset SNPs respectively. One quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome 6 for GT was detected in the whole panel and indica subpanel, and one QTL associated with GC was located on chromosome 6 in the whole panel and indica subpanel. For the PC trait, 8 QTLs were detected in the whole panel on chromosome 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 and 11, and 7 QTLs in the indica subpanel on chromosome 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 and 11. For the three traits, no QTL was detected in japonica subpanel, probably because of the polymorphism repartition between the subpanel, or small population size of japonica subpanel. This paper provides new gene resources and insights into the molecular mechanisms of important agricultural trait of rice phenotypic variation and genetic improvement of rice quality variety breeding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grain qualities including milling quality, appearance quality, eating and cooking quality, and nutritional quality are important indicators in rice breeding. Significant achievements in genetic improvement of rice quality have been made. In this study, we analyzed the variation patterns of 16 traits in 1570 rice varieties and found significant improvements in appearance quality and eating and cooking quality, particularly in hybrid rice. Through genome-wide association study and allelic functional nucleotide polymorphisms analysis of quality trait genes, we found that ALK , FGR1 , FLO7 , GL7 / GW7 , GLW7 , GS2 , GS3 , ONAC129 , OsGRF8 , POW1 , WCR1 , and Wx were associated with the genetic improvement of rice quality traits in Southern China. Allelic functional nucleotide polymorphisms analysis of 13 important rice quality genes, including fragrance gene fgr , were performed using the polymerase chain reaction amplification refractory mutation system technology. The results showed that Gui516, Gui569, Gui721, Ryousi, Rsimiao, Rbasi, and Yuehui9802 possessed multiple superior alleles. This study elucidates the phenotypic changes and molecular basis of key quality traits of varieties in Southern China. The findings will provide guidance for genetic improvement of rice quality and the development of new varieties. • Appearance quality (AQ) and eating and cooking quality (ECQ) • ALK , FGR1 , FLO7 , GL7 / GW7 , GLW7 , GS2 , GS3 , ONAC129 , OsGRF8 , POW1 , WCR1 , and Wx are the main genes affecting rice quality in Southern China. • Gui516, Gui569, Gui721, Ryousi, Rsimiao, Rbasi, and Yuehui9802 possessed multiple superior alleles of rice quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]