Genomics-Based Allele Mining and Its Integration into Breeding in Rice

A large amount of sequence information and diverse accessions or mapping populations enhanced mining of allele with biological and economic interests in rice. To enhance the power of genetic dissection of complex phenotypes and utilization of hidden useful genes, we are developing several mapping populations, such as recombinant inbred lines and chromosome segment substitution lines, which will allow us to extract the useful alleles from natural variants. We demonstrated that these plant materials could be effectively used to detect major and minor genes with heading date. Genome sequencing of donor lines also provided alternative strategy for identification of causal genes of such QTLs. Once we detected an allele or chromosomal region with interest, we can straightforwardly perform an integration of such information to breeding applications. For examples, we have been focusing on blast resistance and root architecture for practical breeding. In both cases, previously unavailable genes could be effectively introduced into modern varieties without any undesirable traits. These efforts in genomics have opened up new opportunities to accelerate not only the genetic dissection of complex traits, but also integration of genomics to breeding in rice.