Introgression of Stay Green Quantitative Trait Locus (QTLS) into Elite Sorghum Variety by MABC

Sorghum is a major staple food crop for the people in semi-arid areas of Asia. Post-flowering drought is a global constraint of sorghum production. The study aimed to improve stay-green characteristics of GS-23 sorghum variety by transferring stg3A and stg3B QTL`s respectively from donor genotypes K260 and K359w of ICRISAT by using marker assisted backcrossing. The experimental material comprised of six basic generations P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 developed from crossing GS-23 × K260 and GS-23 × K359 were genotyped using a set of 133 SNPs and 79 SSR markers. Whereas, 53 polymorphic SNPs among parents and backcross F1s for stay green trait at maturity were used to track introgression of stay green trait. Similarly,10 SSR markers were found to be polymorphic were used to track introgression of stay green trait i.e., stay green trait QTL`s stg3A and stg3B from donor parent K260 and K359w respectively in GS-23 background across backcross population and to identify plants that were homozygous for the desired allele. In which 02 SNPs SnpSB0039 and SnpSB0093 were identified as polymorphic for both K260 and K359w. Whereas 17 SNPs identified polymorphic for K260 and 34 SNPs for K359w. These SNPs were validated in both F1 and BC1F1 populations of both the crosses. Similarly, out of 10 SSR markers utilized, 02 SSRs were identified polymorphic to K260 and 02 SSRs were identified for K359w. Whereas 06 SSRs were polymorphic to both the parents K260 and K359w. Prominent 02 SSRs viz., Xtxp 141_Fam and Xgap84_Vic found to be more reliable and polymorphic to both the parents. These SSRs were validated in both F1 and BC1F1 populations of both the crosses. The genotypic analysis revealed the presence of favorable alleles in homozygous conditions at markers loci associated with stg3A and stg3B QTL`s in BC populations, suggesting successful introgression of stay green QTLs from the donor parents to the recurrent parent. Therefore, our study demonstrated the utility of marker-assisted backcrossing for drought tolerance improvement of locally adapted sorghum variety.