Plant & Animal Genomes XVI Conference

January 12-16, 2008
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Deciphering Drought Genomics: Integrating Rice And Maize Phenotype Data On The Rice Genome Backbone

F Alex Feltus¹ , R Chandra Babu² , Brigitte Courtois³ , Shailaja Hittalmani⁴ , Henry T Nguyen⁵ , Arjula R Reddy⁶ , H E Shashidhar⁴ , Toojinda Theerayut⁷ , Zhikang Li⁸ , John C O'toole⁹ , Jean Marcel Ribaut¹⁰ , Andrew H Paterson¹¹

¹  Department of Genetics & Biochemistry, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29631, USA

²  School of Post Graduate Studies, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, TN 641 003, INDIA

³  CIRAD, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, FRANCE

⁴  Genetics & Plant Breeding, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, KA 560 065, INDIA

⁵  Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, USA

⁶  Department of Plant Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, AP 500 046, INDIA

⁷  Rice Gene Discovery Unit, National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Nakhon Pathom 73410, THAILAND

⁸  Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, CHINA

⁹  The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, NY 10018, USA

¹⁰  Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, 06600 México DF, MEXICO

¹¹  Plant Genome Mapping Lab, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA

We have used a comparative genomic approach to identify breeding targets for drought resilience in rice and maize. We aligned to a rice genome assembly 503 QTLs for fifty-six traits including measures of most aspects of plant growth and economic yield and its components, root characteristics, and several measures of plant water status. Similarly, 452 consensus positions of multiple QTLs for six measures of maize growth and productivity under water stress were aligned to the maize IBM2N genetic map, which in turn was aligned to the rice genome assembly. One finding to be presented is that quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for drought response seldom correspond in rice and maize. These data suggest that genes underlying drought resilience may not be translatable between grass taxa.