GENETIC VARIABILITY AND DIVERSITY OF MUTANT RICE REVEALED BY QUANTITATIVE TRAITS AND MOLECULAR MARKERS

Genetic variability with mutagenic agents has been employed in plant breeding due to its significant contribution to the improvement of the existing rice genotypes by using genetically diverse parents. This study evaluated the genetic variability and diversity of mutant rice using quantitative traits and inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) molecular markers. A field experiment was carried out on M-5 generation of 31 developed mutant lines and their parent (control). Morphological traits and. 25 ISSR molecular markers were used as tools for determining cultivar identities and genetic diversity. The selected primers generated 443 clear polymorphic bands with an average number of 18 per primer. The bands were 85.10 % polymorphic. Un-weighted Pair Group of Arithmetic Means (UPGMA) with similarity coefficients were used for cluster analysis. Through this, all the genotypes were grouped into six clusters. It was shown that crosses between MR219-ML8 and MR219-ML22 could be done for development of high yielding varieties. Also, these mutants could be used as donor parents in rice breeding programs and some can be recommended as new rice varieties suitable for rice cultivation in Malaysia.