S Awasthi - Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras HinduUniversity, Varanasi, India
J.P Lal - Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras HinduUniversity, Varanasi, India

Literatures have reported that a lot of drought related genes were cloned and individual gene showedpositive effects under controlled stress experiments, but were not much effective in the field. Although,the progresses by conventional breeding approaches were achievable as some drought varieties have beenreleased to the farmers in the recent years but this is not adequate to cope up with the future demand ofhigh yield for rice, as drought seems to spread to more regions and seasons. Therefore, marker assistedselection came into lime light for accelerating and giving pace to plant breeding.From the cross (Sarjoo-52× Nagina- 22) × Sarjoo- 52, plants were selected on the basis of presence of gene MQTL1.1 responsiblefor the drought tolerance. These lines have been subjected to further breeding and trial tests. Agronomicperformances and physiological behavior of these lines are also under track. The results showed that thevariety Sarjoo 52 could be efficiently converted to a drought tolerant variety in a backcross generationfollowed by selfing and selection, involving a time of two to three years. Polymorphic markers forforeground and background selection were identified for the high yielding variety to develop a widerrange of drought tolerant variety to meet the needs of farmers in the drought-prone regions. This approachdemonstrates the effective use of marker assisted selection for a major QTL in a molecular breedingprogram.

Background Selection, Drought, Foreground Selection, Marker Assisted Selection, OryzaSativa, QTLs