Genetic diversity of Vietnamese lowland rice germplasms as revealed by SSR markers in relation to seedling vigour under submergence

In the direct-seeding rice cultivation system, seedling vigour is one of the most important traits for stable stand establishment during early seedling stages, particularly under submergence that is caused by temporal flash flood. We studied the genetic diversity in a set of 40 Vietnamese lowland rice varieties using 30 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers covering all rice chromosomes. A total of 111 alleles were detected, with a mean of 3.7 alleles per locus. The number of polymorphic alleles detected by each SSR marker ranged from 2 to 6. The fragment size of a given SSR locus varied between 85 and 650 bp and the frequency of a major allele at each locus ranged from 32.5% to 76.9%. Polymorphism information content value varied from 0.355 to 0.774 with an average of 0.594. The genetic similarity calculated between pairs of rice varieties ranged from 0.03 to 0.97 with an average of 0.27. According to a constructed dendrogram of unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean based on the SSR marker analysis, the tested rice varieties were clustered into two major groups consisting of five subgroups. Significant correlations existed between the mean genetic similarity and the mean seedling vigour estimated by shoot length under submergence among the tested varieties. Our results suggested usefulness of the SSR marker system to assess genetic diversity in Vietnamese rice germplasms in relation to their seedling vigour under submergence