Genetic analysis of ratooning ability of rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Genetic analysis of generation means of F sub(1), F sub(2), F sub(3), F sub(4), and the parental populations of the cross IR10154-23-3-3A/IR15795-232-3-3-2 for ratooning ability was conducted. Good ratooning ability is a recessive trait. The parents differed by at least two pairs of major genes for ratooning ability. A large proportion of transgressive segregants in F sub(2) suggested that the expression of ratooning ability is influenced not only by major genes but also by modifiers. Broad-sense heritability estimates computed by different methods ranged from 0.66 to 0.88. Narrow-sense heritability by the F sub(4)-F sub(3) regression method was 0.39.