Abstract
The rice plant Oryza sativa L. has four separate loci coding for fructose-1, 6-bisphosphate aldolase (aldolase). One codes for chloroplast aldolase (AldP), and the other three for the cytoplasmic counterparts, AldC-a, AldC-1, and AldC-2. In the present study, we examined the occurrence of structural variations in the aldolase gene regions among different ecotypes and cultivars of rice. Southern blot hybridization showed that the structure of the AldP and AldC-1 gene regions did not differ among eight rice cultivars examined here, based on restriction fragment length polymorphism. However, the AldC-a and AldC-2 Ioci exhibited four and two types of variations, respectively. The variations enabled to distinguish five different groups of rice cultivars including so-called red, green and black rice in addition to japonica and indica cultivars. Thus, these variant gene regions may be used as markers for the classification of rice cultivars.
