Development of New Submergence Tolerant Rice Variety for Bangladesh Using Marker-Assisted Backcrossing

Abstract Submergence tolerant high yielding rice variety was developed using BR11 as a recipient parent applying foreground, phenotypic and background selection approaches. Recombinant selection was found essential to minimize linkage drag by BC 2 F 2 generation. Without recombinant selection, the introgression size in the backcross recombinant lines (BRLs) was approximately 15 Mb on the carrier chromosome. The BRLs were found submergence tolerance compared to the check varieties under complete submergence for two weeks at Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, and produced higher yield compared to the isogenic Sub1-line under controlled submerged condition. The BRL IR85260-66-654-Gaz2 was released as BRRI dhan52 in 2010, which was the first high yielding submergence tolerant variety in Bangladesh. BRRI dhan52 produced grain yield ranging from 4.2 to 5.2 t/hm 2 under different flash flood prone areas of Bangladesh in three consecutive seasons. The study demonstrated the efficiency of recombinant selection and better adaptability of the newly released submergence tolerant high yielding variety in flash flood prone different areas of the country with respect to submergence tolerance and yield potential.