Efficient mutation induction using carbon-ion beams irradiation and simple genomic screening with SSR and RAPD in japonica rice

Abstract Background Carbon ion-beam irradiation has been widely used to advance crop breeding. The purpose of this study was to explore whether irradiation is suitable for mutation creation of japonica rice (Oryza sativaL.) in northeast China and its potential effects on local germplasm resources. Methods and Results 200 Gy irradiation was applied to screened stable rice mutants, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular markers were applied to detect the DNA polymorphisms of mutants and local varieties. Here, the mutants with a shorter maturation period than the mutagenic parent were screened. Among control (Tonghe899) and mutants, RAPD and SSR primers revealed that a total of 574 bands of which 385 were polymorphic (67.07%), all mutants had polymorphic DNA bands, and the polymorphism information content (PIC) of RAPD and SSR varied from 0.500 to 0.924 and 0.836 to 0.954, respectively. Meanwhile, among mutant and other local varieties, RAPD and SSR primers generated a total of 658 amplified bands with 530 polymorphic bands (80.55%). Notably, the addition of mutants reduced the lowest Jaccard’s similarity coefficient of the local varieties population from 0.65 to 0.62. Conclusions In summary, carbon-ion beam irradiating rice seeds generate mutants that can develop as new cultivars, and it slightly expands the genetic diversity of the selected japonica rice from northeast China. RAPD and SSR markers had good polymorphism and could be used for DNA polymorphism identification and facilitate inter-cultivar identification for japonica rice in northeast China.