Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most important crops in the world. Low temperature stress is a common problem of rice cultivation, and is a significant factor affectting global food produc­tion. Previous investigations based on the>[5] C.C. Li and J.N. Rutger, Inheritance of cool-temperature seedling vigor in rice and its relationship with other agronomic characters, Crop. Sci. 20 (1980), pp. 295–298.. With the successful application of QTL mapping technology in many plant species over the past decade, more and more genes (or QTLs) affecting a wide range of agriculturally and bio­logi­cally important complex traits have been identified. As cold tolerance is so important for rice, we suppose that more than one major QTLs are responsi­ble for it. So we constructed a skeleton bin map with a total of 2334 recombination bins us­ing 150 RILs derived from crosses between Nipponbare (japonica, cold tolerant) and 93-11 (indica, cold sensitive) to investigate rice cold tolerance at seedling stage. Then three QTLs were detected on chromosome 2, 4 and 12. And these QTLs may be useful as targets for varietal improvement and positional cloning.