Incorporation of BLB resistance genes into basmati rice variety CSR-30 (Oryza sativa L.) through marker assisted selection

In Asia, rice is the most important, widely consumed staple food for a large part of the world's human population. Bacterial leaf blight (BB), caused by the bacterium, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is one of the major disease affecting Basmati rice production in India. CSR-30 is a very popular high yielding, salt tolerant Basmati variety widely grown in Haryana, India but highly susceptible to BB. In the present study, therefore, we successfully introgressed two BB resistance genes (Xa21 and xa13) from BB resistant donor variety Pusa Basmati-1460 into the BB susceptible variety CSR-30 through marker assisted selection (MAS).