Identification of QTL for Early Heading Date of H143 in Rice

Rice is a facultative short-day plant that flowers in response to reduced day lengths. This study was conducted to identify quantitative trait loci(QTL) for the early heading date(EHD) using H143 line showing extreme EHD compared to other regular cultivars in rice. The japonica H143 was crossed with a japonica cultivar 'Dongjinbyeo' as well as a tongil cultivar 'Milyang23' to measure the inheritance mode of EHD and identify major QTL conferring EHD, respectively. Pooling test revealed that segregation distortion occurred on chromosome 7 and subsequent linkage map was constructed using 10 SSR markers. QTL analysis using Q-gene 3.06 revealed that the EHD trait in H143 was largely controlled by two major QTL, EH7-1 and EH7-2, accounting for more than 40% of genetic variation that were closely related to the previously reported QTL, Hd4 and Hd2, respectively. This result suggests that these two QTL markers may be a useful source for the control of heading date in rice breeding programs.