Parental polymorphism survey using rice microsatellite markers between VGD 1 and ADT 55 for marker-assisted backcross breeding program

Marker-assisted backcross breeding program was anticipated to introgress bacterial blight (BB) resistance genes into an elite fine-grain rice cultivar VGD 1. Pyramided with three bacterial blight (BB) resistance genes (xa5, Xa13, Xa21), ADT 55 was the donor parent. A parental polymorphism survey was executed between VGD1 and ADT 55 using genome-wide simple sequence repeats (SSR) also called microsatellite markers, to identify polymorphic markers. Distributed throughout 12 chromosomes of rice, in the current research 166 SSR markers were employed, out of which 58 are found to be polymorphic between VGD 1 and ADT 55 with 35% parental polymorphism percentage and the polymorphic information content (PIC) is about 0.6. The polymorphic microsatellite markers obtained through this survey could be utilized for background selection of backcross progenies to retrieve the highest recurrent parent genome.