Dissection of QTLs for Yield Traits on the Short Arm of Rice Chromosome 6

This study was undertaken to dissect quantitative trait loci (QTLs) controlling yield traits on the short arm of rice chromosome 6. A residual heterozygous line that carries a heterozygous segment extending from RM587 to RM19784 on the short arm of rice chromosome 6 was selected from an F7 population of the indica rice cross Zhenshan 97B/Milyang 46. An F2:3 population consisting of 221 lines was derived and grown in two trial sites. Six yield traits including number of panicles per plant, number of filled grains per panicle, total number of spikelets per panicle, spikelet fertility, 1 000-grain weight, and grain yield per plant were measured. An SSR marker linkage map was constructed and employed to determine QTLs for yield traits with Windows QTL Cartographer 2.5. QTLs were detected in the target interval for all the traits analyzed except NP, with phenotypic variance explained by a single QTL ranging between 6.3% and 35.2%. Most of the QTLs for yield components acted as additive QTLs, while the three QTLs for grain yield had dominance degrees of 1.65, 0.84, and −0.42, respectively. It was indicated that three or more QTLs for yield traits were located in the target region. The genetic action mode, the direction of the QTL effect, and the magnitude of the QTL effect varied among different QTLs for a given trait, and among QTLs for different traits that were located in the same interval.