GENE FLOW BETWEEN RED RICE AND CULTIVATED RICE ESTIMATED BY MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate the capacity of SSR markers to detect the gene flow between the red rice (RR) and the cultivated rice (CR). SSR is currently used in plant genomic analysis due to the high information content, to be co-dominant, and based on the PCR reaction. The field experiment was organized in ten concentric circles, 5 m to 50 m apart from a central red rice plant, assumed as the pollen donor. One hundred twenty rice CR plants, cv. BR-Irga 409, were planted in the intersections of the concentric circles and the twelve radii. From 51 SSR markers, four were selected due to their capacity to detect the polymorphism between RR and CR, aiming to identify RR alleles in seeds produced by BR-Irga 409 plants. The maximum distance found for gene flow between RR and CR plants was 10 m from the RR plant. In theory, at 0.1% cross pollination rate, this distance can generate 4,710 hybrids between RR and CR. In the next generation, about 3,532 plants would produce exclusively rice grains with red color. The SSR markers were able to identify the gene flow between RR and CR; therefore, they can be useful to increase the precision of cross pollination rate estimates in rice, mainly if used with other methodologies (e.g., herbicide tolerant plants).

KEY WORDS: Cross pollination; microsatellite markers; Oryza sativa.