Genetic Diversity of Korean Rice Breeding Parents as Measured by DNA Fingerprinting with Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) Markers

Molecular markers are useful tools for evaluating genetic diversity and determining cultivar identity. Present study was conducted to evaluate the genetic diversity within a diverse collection of rice accessions used for Korean breeding programs. Two hundred eighty-seven rice cultivars, composed of temperate japonica, tropical japonica, indica, and Tongil-type of Korean crossing parents were evaluated by means of 15 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. A total of 99 alleles were detected, and the number of alleles per marker ranged from 4 to 11, with an average of 6.6 per locus. Polymorphism information content (PIC) for each of the SSR markers ranged from 0.2924 to 0.8102 with an average of 0.5785. These results, with the result that use of only 15 SSR markers made all rice cultivars examined could be uniquely distinguished, imply the efficiency of SSR markers for analysis of genetic diversity in rice. Cluster analysis was performed on similar coefficient matrics calculated from SSR markers to generate a dendogram in which two major groups corresponding to japonica (Group I) and indica and Tongil type rice (group II) with additional subclasses within both major groups. The narrowness of the Korean breeding germplasm was revealed by the fact that most of the Korean-bred and Japan-bred temperate japonica cultivars were concentrated into only 2 of the sub-group I-1 (143 cultivars) and I-2 (58 cultivars) among six sub-groups in major group of japonica. This is because of the japonica accessions used in this study was a very closely related ones because of frequent sharing of the crossing parents with similar genetic background with synergy effect of the inherited genetic difference between indica and japonica. A rice breeding strategy with the use of molecular markers was discussed for overcoming of genetic vulnerability owing to this genetic narrowness.