Biotechnology Journal International

About 20% of the net cultivable land is affected by various levels of salinity, which leads to season loss and crop loss. A rice variety BINA 7 was used to develop saline tolerant, high yielding varieties through TILLING. 10 rice lines including 5 from TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) population were studied in Patuakhali, the coastal zone of Bangladesh between July to December, where maximum salinity reached during harvest was close to 8 ds/m². Traits like plant height, effective tillers, thousand seed weight on randomly selected plant basis and yield (kg/plot) were recorded. Appropriate statistical analysis was done. This was followed by Genetic Fingerprinting using saline trait specific, 20 SSR primers of the 5 TILLING population along with parent. Data Analysis of band position and creation of dendogram along with genetic distance between the materials have been reported. Indications of positive relationship between the molecular charactization and morphological studies gave direction towards possible saline tolerant lines. It was clearly seen from the 20 SSR markers used that the lines developed through the TILLING technique has more possibility of being saline tolerant than the parent,e.g. primer RM 585 bound between 175-650 bp to all except the parent. Such results indicated the TILLING lines to be diverse than the parent.