Abstract

A set of 36 upland rice varieties including 24 popular short duration ruling rice varieties and 12 mutants were electrophoresed following SDS-PAGE of total seed storage protein. The SDS-PAGE of total seed storage protein revealed altogether 23 scorable polypeptide bands with molecular weights ranging from 10.0 to 116.0 kD. Polypeptide bands at 37–39 kD and 22–23 kD were monomorphic and rest of the bands had shown polymorphism to the extent of 91.3% among the test genotypes. Rudra, Zhu 11–26, Vandana, Anjali, Annada, Saria, ORT 28 and ORT 36 had shown maximum 22 polypeptide bands, while Badami and ORT 39 revealed as low as 11 bands only. ORT 39 can be identified from rest of the test genotypes by absence of 57.0, 53.0 and 51.2 kD polypeptide bands. Similarly, Badami had unique absence of bands at 93.0, 70.0, 67.3 and 60 kD which were present in all other short duration test genotypes including mutants of Mandakini as well as Zhu 11–26. The polypeptide band at 27.5 kD was characteristically absent in cv. Sneha. Similar is the case for Badami and Mandakini which lacked 108.0 kD polypeptide band. In this context, a low mol. wt. band (16.0 kD) was specifically revealed only in five genotypes e. g. Rudra, Zhu 11–26, Kalinga-III, Vandana and Annada. Such a genotype-specific fingerprint is of immense value for varietal certification. ORT 28 and ORT 10 revealed inducement of an additional band at 65 kD, while a low mol. wt. polypeptide band at 16.0 kD was absent in both these mutants as compared to their parent (Zhu 1126). All mutants of Mandakini revealed 108.0, 47.0 and 45.0 kD polypeptide bands, but these were specifically absent in their parents. In contrast, Mandakini revealed the 13.0 kD, but it was absent in its mutants e. g. ORT 30, ORT 5, ORT 11 and ORT 22. This signifies mutational change which has direct bearing in total seed protein expression. ORT 39 and Mandakini were identified to have medium amylose content based on the staining intensity of the protein marker at 60 kD, whereas Keshari and four mutants of Mandakini (ORT 30, ORT 5, ORT 11 and ORT 22); and one mutant of Zhu 11–26 (ORT 32) were identified to be qualitatively superior for high lysine content owing to lack of the 13.0 kD prolamin polypeptide band. The test genotypes were distributed into three clusters at about 72% phenon level. Badami and ORT 39 formed two single variety divergent clusters (Clusters I and II), while cluster III was a large multivariety cluster comprising 34 upland genotypes which were further grouped into four sub-clusters (Clusters IIIA-IIID) at around 88.4% phenon level. Besides, the seed protein based clusters revealed some sort of characteristic morphological features. Genotypes comprising cluster I (Badami), cluster II (ORT 39) and cluster IIIA (ORT 30 and ORT 11) were identified as highly divergent which may serve as a valuable source genotypes in recombination breeding. The entire work was carried out during 2012–14.