Physicochemical Properties of a Giant Embryo Mutant Induced by T-DNA Insertion in Rice

This study was conducted to determine the physicochemical properties of a giant embryo rice ‘P47JB-4-B-5-B’ derived from the cross between ‘P47’, a mutant of ‘Hwayoung’ induced by T-DNA insertion, and ‘Junam’. The grain appearance and chemical components of the embryo were analyzed and compared with a donor cultivar, ‘Hwayoung’. The proportion of embryo weight to grain weight of ‘P47 JB-4-B-5-B’ was 2.2 times heavier (6.7%) than that (3.1%) of ‘Hwayoung’. Total free amino acid content (75.81 mg/ 100 g) of ‘P47JB-4-B-5-B’ was 2.1 times higher than that of ‘Hwayoung’. The GABA content in brown rice was 14.06 mg/100 g in ‘P47JB-4-B-5-B’ and 6.8 mg/100 g in ‘Hwayoung’. Especially, the GABA content in brown rice of ‘P47JB-4-B-5-B’ remarkably increased (about 33 times from 1.48 mg to 44.81 mg/100 g) 2 days after germination. Continuous frequency distributions and transgressive segregation in embryo length and width were observed in the F2 population of the cross between ‘P47’ and ‘Cheongcheong’, indicating that the giant embryo was controlled by quantitative trait loci. However, embryo length and width demonstrated high broad sense heritability, implying that giant embryonic traits could be selected in earlier generations in comparison with other quantitative traits.