Marker Assisted Introgression and Evaluation of Retinol Equivalent Carotenoid in the Elite Cultivars Background from Traditional Landrace ‘Kavuni’

Bioactive compound ‘lutein’, an α-carotenoid is responsible for ocular health and preventing major cardiovascular diseases in human beings and it cannot be synthesized de novo. ‘Lutein content is found only in traces among the popular cultivars of rice. ‘Kavuni’, an Indian traditional landrace, rich in lutein content (238 μg/100 g) is used in the present study to transfer lutein into two popular cultivars ‘ASD 16’ and ‘Swarna Sub1’ using marker assisted backcross breeding strategy. Phenotyping for lutein quantification was done using HPLC (High performance Liquid Chromatography) and further antioxidant analysis was carried out by DPPH (1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl) based scavenging assay. Across the crosses, eight backcross progeny were found to have higher lutein content than respective recurrent parents with an average lutein content of 96.5 μg/100 g and background recovery of 64.53%. One progeny (S33) from Cross II recorded highest lutein content of 322 μg/100 g, much higher than the donor parent indicating transgressive segregation. Significant positive correlation was observed between lutein content and antioxidants among the backcross progeny.