Genotype frequency of black hull locus (Bh4) in weedy rice (Oryza sativa f. spontanea) populations

Abstract

Black hull 4 (Bh4), is a hull color candidate gene that causes a black pigmentation in the ripened hulls of rice. A 22-bp deletion within exon 3 of the Bh4 variant disrupted the Bh4 function, which lead to a straw-white hull in Asian cultivated rice and African cultivated rice. A survey for the Bh4 locus in a collection of weedy rice from Thailand and Laos was performed. The data showed that 37.5% of the samples were heterozygous, 15.5% with the black hull genotype (BB) and 5.5% with yellow genotype (YY). The allele frequencies were 0.71 and 0.29 for the Y and B alleles, respectively. Based on the Hardy-Weinberg principle, this Bh4 locus of weedy rice is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE).

Keywords

• oryza sativa f. spontanea
• weedy rice
• genetic diversity
• black hull color