The genetic dissection of agronomically important traits in closely related Japanese rice cultivars is still in its infancy mainly because of the narrow genetic diversity within japonica rice cultivars. In an attempt to unveil potential polymorphism between closely related Japanese rice cultivars, we used a next-generation-sequencing-based genotyping method: genotyping by random amplicon sequencing-direct (GRAS-Di) to develop genetic linkage maps. In this study, four recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations and their parents were used. A final RIL number of 190 for RIL71, 96 for RIL98, 95 for RIL16, and 94 for RIL91 derived from crosses between a common leading Japanese rice cultivar Koshihikari and Yamadanishiki, Taichung 65, Fujisaka 5, and Futaba, respectively, and the parent plants were subjected to GRAS-Di library construction and sequencing. Approximately 438.7 Mbp, 440 Mbp, 403.1 Mbp, and 392 Mbp called bases covering 97.5%, 97.3%, 98.3%, and 96.1%, respectively, of the estimated rice genome sequence at average depth of 1× were generated. Analysis of genotypic data identified 1050, 1285, 1708, and 1704 markers for each of the above RIL populations, respectively. Markers generated by GRAS-Di were organized into linkage maps and compared with those generated by GoldenGate SNP assay of the same RIL populations; the average genetic distance between markers showed a clear decrease in the four RIL populations when we integrated markers of both linkage maps. Genetic studies using these markers successfully localized five QTLs associated with heading date on chromosomes 3, 6, and 7 and which previously were identified as Hd1, Hd2, Hd6, Hd16, and Hd17. Therefore, GRAS-Di technology provided a low cost and efficient genotyping to overcome the narrow genetic diversity in closely related Japanese rice cultivars and enabled us to generate a high density linkage map in this germplasm.
Keywords: GRAS-Di genotyping; Japanese rice; genetic linkage map; japonica subspecies; recombinant inbred lines.