Unique Genotypic Differences Discovered among Indigenous Bangladeshi Rice Landraces

Bangladesh is a reservoir of diverse rice germplasm and is home to many landraces with unique, important traits. Molecular characterization of these landraces is of value for their identification, preservation, and potential use in breeding programs. Thirty-eight rice landraces from different regions of Bangladesh including some high yielding BRRI varieties were analyzed by 34 polymorphic microsatellite markers yielding a total of 258 reproducible alleles. The analysis could locate 34 unique identifiers for 21 genotypes, making the latter potentially amenable to identity verification. An identity map for these genotypes was constructed with all the 12 chromosomes of the rice genome. Polymorphism information content (PIC) scores of the 34 SSR markers were 0.098 to 0.89 where on average 7.5 alleles were observed. A dendogram constructed using UPGMA clustered the varieties into two major groups and five subgroups. In some cases, the clustering matched with properties like aromaticity, stickiness, salt tolerance, and photoperiod insensitivity. The results will help breeders to work towards the proper utilization of these landraces for parental selection and linkage map construction for discovery of useful alleles.