LAUSR

Abstract Thousand-grain weight (TGW) is a key component of grain yield in rice. This study was conducted to validate and fine-map qTGW1.2a, a quantitative trait locus for grain weight and grain size previously located in a 933.6-kb region on the long arm of rice chromosome 1. Firstly, three residual heterozygotes (RHs) were selected from a BC2F11 population of the indica rice cross Zhenshan 97 (ZS97)///ZS97//ZS97/Milyang 46. The heterozygous segments in these RHs were arranged successively in physical positions, forming one set of sequential residual heterozygotes (SeqRHs). In each of the populations derived, non-recombinant homozygotes were identified to produce near isogenic lines (NILs) comprising the two homozygous genotypes. The NILs were tested for grain weight, grain length and grain width. QTL analyses for the three traits were performed. Then, the updated QTL location was followed for a new run of SeqRHs identification-NIL development-QTL mapping. Altogether, 11 NIL populations derived from four sets of SeqRHs were developed and used. qTGW1.2a was finally delimitated into a 77.5-kb region containing 13 annotated genes. In the six populations segregating this QTL, which were in four generations and were tested across four years, the allelic direction of qTGW1.2a remained consistent and the genetic effects were stable. For TGW, the additive effects ranged from 0.23 to 0.38 g and the proportions of phenotypic variance explained ranged from 26.15% to 41.65%. These results provide a good foundation for the cloning and functional analysis of qTGW1.2a.