Abstract
Rice Genome Project has borne good fruits such as determination of whole genome sequences and accumulation of DNA markers. It has also been possible to make a marker at the arbitrary places on rice genome.
Here, we introduced a new breeding approach by DNA marker-assisted selection based on development of Introgression Lines (ILs). ILs consists of a series of lines harboring a single homozygous donor segment introgressed into a uniformed genetic background. A series of ILs has been covered entire genome with overlapping introgressed segments of each line. ILs is powerful tool to simply detect Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs), especially, for which it is difficult to evaluate their genetic contribution. And also, the lines possessing hopeful QTL can be utilized as superior breeding materials. We have developed the ILs of Kasalath (an indica rice variety) chromosome segment into Koshihikari (japonica), and detected some effective QTLs for agricultural traits using it.
