NGS costs are decreasing rapidly, and beneficial application of the technology to plant genomics seems inevitable. Trying to interpret the agriculturally important traits like yield is actively in progress all across the globe. However, the current stage of bio-informatic technology as applied to the interpretation of agricultural trait appears not yet at a level of maturity to justify widespread plant genome sequencing for user-friendly molecular breeding. It is necessary to construct dense mutation block (DMB) based molecular breeding system for selecting plants with optimal agricultural performance; as well as for identifying useful quantitative trait loci (QTLs).
Firstly, we screened and selected DMBs-specific INDEL markers obtained from SNV density profiles using 42 genome sequences of Korean cultivar and public sequences of 24 japonica rice cultivars. Secondly, we analyzed the genetic similarity between 288 Korean cultivars using 113 DMB-specific INDEL markers, which could differentiate on agarose gel by PCR. And we are going to integrate 360 INDEL markers up to 30 per each chromosome. Finally, we selected 40 founder lines considering the importance of the breeding, the purpose of use, and plant ecotype. To construct rice nested association mapping population we crossed each founder lines with the pollen of Hwayoungbyeo which was most commonly used in korean rice breeding program. F2 seed multiplication and generation iteration are ongoing.