Not AvailableLack of appropriate donors, non-utilization of high throughput phenotyping and genotyping
platforms with high genotype × environment interaction restrained identifcation of robust QTLs
for grain protein content (GPC) in rice. In the present investigation a BC3F4 mapping population
was developed using grain protein donor, ARC10075 and high-yielding cultivar Naveen and 190 lines
were genotyped using 40K Afmetrix custom SNP array with the objective to identify stable QTLs
for protein content. Three of the identifed QTLs, one for GPC (qGPC1.1) and the other two for single
grain protein content (qSGPC2.1, qSGPC7.1) were stable over the environments explaining 13%, 14%
and 7.8% of the phenotypic variances, respectively. Stability and repeatability of these additive QTLs
were supported by the synergistic additive efects of multi-environmental-QTLs. One epistatic-QTL,
independent of the main efect QTL was detected over the environment for SGPC. A few functional
genes governing seed storage protein were hypothesised inside these identifed QTLs. The qGPC1.1 was
validated by NIR Spectroscopy-based high throughput phenotyping in BC3F5 population. Higher glutelin
content was estimated in high-protein lines with the introgression of qGPC1.1 in telomeric region of
short arm of chromosome 1. This was supported by the postulation of probable candidate gene inside
this QTL region encoding glutelin family proteins.Not Availabl
