Seedling vigor in drought stress conditions is an important characteristic of the dry direct-seeded rice system. The drought stress in the seedling stage disrupts seed germination and delays the establishment of seedlings. However, little is known about the genetic mechanism of seedling vigor in drought conditions. The identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) was conducted using 162 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a cross between two rice varieties—a Tongil-type Milyang23 and a temperate japonica Tong88-7. The seedling vigor of these RILs was characterized by measuring 10 morphological traits of the seedlings grown under drought conditions. The Tong88-7 seedlings showed significantly higher values than the Milyang23 seedlings for all traits. The genotyping-by-sequencing method was used to construct a map of 6140 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Six main-effect QTLs (M-QTLs) associated with seedling vigor traits under drought stress were identified on chromosomes 9 and 11. In particular, five out of these six QTLs were located on chromosome 11, explaining the phenotypic variances of 4.3% through 10.1%. In addition, 21 epistatic QTLs (E-QTLs) were detected, and the 27 loci involved in this interaction were distributed on 11 chromosomes. Both M-QTLs and E-QTLs detected in this study would be useful in breeding programs to develop elite rice varieties especially adapted to dry direct-seeded rice system.
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