Rice landrace diversity in Nepal: Variability of agro-morphological traits and SSR markers in landraces from a high-altitude site

Nepal has a wide diversity of rice landraces in all rice-growing areas from low to high altitude. A baseline survey in Jumla, a high-altitude site (2200–3000 m), identified rice landraces with different names that differed in phenotype and were adapted to the extreme high-altitude environment. Jumli...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Field crops research 2006-02, Vol.95 (2), p.327-335
Main Authors: Bajracharya, J., Steele, K.A., Jarvis, D.I., Sthapit, B.R., Witcombe, J.R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agro-morpological diversity
agronomic traits
altitude
Genetic diversity
genetic markers
genetic variation
grain crops
High-altitude rice
inflorescences
landraces
loci
microsatellite repeats
Microsatellites
Nepal
Oryza sativa
phenotype
plant adaptation
plant morphology
rice
seeds
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Nepal has a wide diversity of rice landraces in all rice-growing areas from low to high altitude. A baseline survey in Jumla, a high-altitude site (2200–3000 m), identified rice landraces with different names that differed in phenotype and were adapted to the extreme high-altitude environment. Jumli Marshi was the most common traditional rice variety, accounting for 85% of samples collected. The genetic diversity of these landraces was assessed by agro-morphological variability and microsatellite marker polymorphism. Forty-two qualitative and quantitative traits and 39 microsatellite (simple sequence repeats, SSR) markers were assessed among accessions with 10 different names. The accessions showed low morphological diversity with an average Shannon Weaver diversity index of 0.23. Only 16 morphological traits showed significant variation among the accessions. Discriminant function analysis showed that only 36% of accessions could be clustered according to name by morphological traits. Only one SSR locus was polymorphic, distinguishing only one accession. The names used by farmers to describe the phenotypic characteristics of panicle and grains were inconsistent indicators of genetic identity. We conclude that the Jumla landrace population has a narrow genetic base. The diversity detected was sufficiently low for it to be possible that there was a single origin for all of the Jumla landraces.
ISSN:0378-4290
1872-6852
DOI:10.1016/j.fcr.2005.04.014