Rice is the world's most important food crop, providing the daily calorie intake for more than half of the world's population. Rice breeding has always been preoccupied with maximizing yield potential. However, numerous abiotic factors, such as salt, cold, drought, and heat, significantly reduce rice productivity. Salinity, one of the major abiotic stresses, reduces rice yield worldwide. This study was conducted to determine new quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that regulate salt tolerance in rice seedlings. One F2:3 mapping population was derived from a cross between BRRI dhan49 (a popular but sensitive rainfed rice variety) and Akundi (a salt-tolerant rice landrace in Bangladesh used as a donor parent). The 1k-Rice Custom Amplicon (1k-RiCA) single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were used to genotype this mapping population. After removing segregation distortion and monomorphic markers, 884 SNPs generated a 1526.8 cM-long genetic linkage map with a mean marker density of 1.7 cM for the 12 linkage groups. By exploiting QGene and ICIM-ADD, a sum of 15 QTLs for nine traits was identified in salt stress on seven chromosomes. Four important genomic loci were identified (qSES1, qSL1, qSUR1 and qRL1) on chromosome 1. Out of these 15 QTLs, 14 QTLs are unique, as no other study has mapped in the same chromosomal location. We also detected 15 putative candidate genes and their functions. The ICIM-EPI approach identified 43 significant pairwise epistasis interactions between regions associated with and unassociated with QTLs. Apart from more well-known donors, Akundi serves as an important new donor source for global salt tolerance breeding initiatives, including Bangladesh. The introgression of the novel QTLs identified in this study will accelerate the development of new salt-tolerant varieties that are highly resistant to salt stress using marker-enabled breeding.
Keywords: Oryza sativa L.; SNP genotyping; indica germplasm; new QTL; salt tolerance.