Development of Rice Varieties Adaptive to Nontidal Swampland using MABC: Growth Characteristics of Parent Plant and F1 Result

Lowland swamps have enormous potential and have been proven to provide significant contributions as a buffer in the national food security system. Rice farmers in non-tidal swamplands of South Sumatra plant rice at the end of the rainy season, because they wait for the water to recede, and therefore rice plants are very vulnerable to submerged stress in the vegetative phase and drought stress in the generative phase. This study aims to obtain rice varieties that are adaptive to these conditions and superior to lowland swamp agro-ecosystems. The research was conducted at the Plant Physiology Laboratory and Green House of Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Sriwijaya University. In this study, reciprocal crosses were carried out between Inpago 5 and Inpara 8 rice varieties. Inpago 5 variety was used because it has tolerant characters to drought stress in the generative phase and also has high production in farmers’ nontidal swampland. Inpara 8 has a Sub1 gene so that resistant to submerged stress in the vegetative phase. The results showed that both varieties had different characters in their growth and yield. Both varieties were crossed reciprocally and the success of crossing was more than 50%. F1 plants will be backcrossed with their female parents to get BC1F1 plants, and then selected using the MABC method [foreground selection, phenotypic selection, and background selection]. From the results of the MABC selection process, there will be BC1F1 plants with the genome proportion close to the female parent and confirmed to have the Sub1 gene.