Background: Rice aleurone layer develops different colours with various chemical tests that may help to develop some rapid tests for identification/grouping of rice varieties. Understanding the colour inheritance pattern could enable to develop chemical clues that may help for genetic purity analysis along with grow-out-test.
Results: In this study, inheritance pattern of aleurone layer colour was studied in parents, F1 and F2 progenies derived from the crosses IR 36 × Acc. No. 2693 and IR 64 × Acc. No. 2693. The parent IR 36 showed light yellow (NaOH/KOH) and brown (phenol/modified phenol test) colour; whereas, Acc. No. 2693 revealed wine red/dark wine red (NaOH/KOH) and light brown colour/no reaction (phenol/modified phenol test). In contrary, another parent IR 64 exhibited light yellow (KOH/NaOH) and dark brown (phenol, modified phenol) colour. Both the F1 showed an intermediate light wine red colour (NaOH/KOH) and dark brown (phenol and modified phenol) colour, which is dominant over their one of the parents. The colour pattern with standard phenol/modified phenol, NaOH and KOH tests in F2 progenies of both the crosses showed 9:7 (complementary gene interaction) and 11:5 ratios (reciprocal dominance modification of recessive alleles), respectively.
Conclusions: Our findings clearly elucidate the colour inheritance pattern in rice that may facilitate to develop rapid chemical tests to identify/ group the varieties for genetic purity analysis.
Keywords: Aleurone layer; Alleles; Complementary gene action; Duplicate gene action; Rice.