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Unusually High Frequency of Cross-Pollination Between Rice Landraces Shiuli and Kharah with Coincident Flower-Opening Times


Affiliations
1 Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, 186A Kalikapur Canal Road, Kolkata 700 099, India
 

Cross-pollination in cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) is rarely reported to exceed 2%. This low cross-pollination frequency (CPF) is conducive to success-fully maintaining the purity of rice landraces for many generations. We were therefore surprised to notice a dramatic loss of genetic purity in some of the pure line landraces in many farmers’ fields. Having ruled out the possibility of mixing of seeds from dif-ferent varieties, we surmised this rapid loss of genetic purity to be due to a somewhat higher degree of cross-pollination, and conducted a carefully designed expe-riment with suitably chosen pairs of landraces. We report here an unusually high (>81%) CPF seen in a pair of landraces whose flower opening times (FOTs) were coincident. Our control experiment on a pair of landraces with non-overlapping FOTs failed to detect any cross-pollination. This preliminary report sug-gests that the crucial importance of FOT diversity in landraces in determining CPF has not been recognized in designs of previous reports of crossing experiments, resulting in a severe underestimation of CPF in cultivated rice under natural conditions.

Keywords

Cross-Pollination Frequency, Flower Opening and Closing Times, Genetic Purity, Pollen Viability, Rice Landraces.
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  • Unusually High Frequency of Cross-Pollination Between Rice Landraces Shiuli and Kharah with Coincident Flower-Opening Times

Abstract Views: 374  |  PDF Views: 131

Authors

Debal Deb
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, 186A Kalikapur Canal Road, Kolkata 700 099, India
D. Bhattacharya
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, 186A Kalikapur Canal Road, Kolkata 700 099, India

Abstract


Cross-pollination in cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) is rarely reported to exceed 2%. This low cross-pollination frequency (CPF) is conducive to success-fully maintaining the purity of rice landraces for many generations. We were therefore surprised to notice a dramatic loss of genetic purity in some of the pure line landraces in many farmers’ fields. Having ruled out the possibility of mixing of seeds from dif-ferent varieties, we surmised this rapid loss of genetic purity to be due to a somewhat higher degree of cross-pollination, and conducted a carefully designed expe-riment with suitably chosen pairs of landraces. We report here an unusually high (>81%) CPF seen in a pair of landraces whose flower opening times (FOTs) were coincident. Our control experiment on a pair of landraces with non-overlapping FOTs failed to detect any cross-pollination. This preliminary report sug-gests that the crucial importance of FOT diversity in landraces in determining CPF has not been recognized in designs of previous reports of crossing experiments, resulting in a severe underestimation of CPF in cultivated rice under natural conditions.

Keywords


Cross-Pollination Frequency, Flower Opening and Closing Times, Genetic Purity, Pollen Viability, Rice Landraces.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv121%2Fi1%2F121-126