Identification of reliable QTLs and designed QTL breeding for grain shape and milling quality in the reciprocal introgression lines in rice

Milling quality (MQ) and grain shape (GS) of rice (Oryza sativa L.) are correlated traits, both determine farmers' final profit. More than one population under multiple environments may provide valuable information for breeding selection on these MQ-GS correlations. However, suitable analytical methods for reciprocal introgression lines with linkage map for this kind of correlation remains unclear. In this study, our major tasks were (1) to provide a set of reciprocal introgression lines (composed of two BC2RIL populations) suitable for mapping by linkage mapping using markers/bins with physical positions; (2) to test the mapping effects of different methods by using MQ-GS correlation dissection as sample case; (3) to perform genetic and breeding simulation on pyramiding favorite alleles of QTLs for representative MQ-GS traits. Finally, with four analysis methods and data collected under five environments, we identified about 28.4 loci on average for MQ-GS traits. Notably, 52.3% of these loci were commonly detected by different methods and eight loci were novel. There were also nine regions harboring loci for different MQ-GS traits which may be underlying the MQ-GS correlations. Background independent (BI) loci were also found for each MQ and GS trait. All these information may provide useful resources for rice molecular breeding.