Assessment of genetic purity of bulked‐seed of rice CMS lines using capillary electrophoresis

Abstract Genetically pure cytoplasmic male sterile line (A‐line) is essential to generate pure hybrid seeds in order to harness the yield heterosis in rice. Conventionally, seed purity testing is carried by grow‐out test, which has many limitations. Seed purity assessments based on molecular markers reduce the time required for analysis significantly. However, it is very tedious as at least 200–400 seeds/seedlings are needed to be analyzed individually. An assay based on bulked‐seed and molecular markers will be an ideal system. Keeping these points in view, in the present study, a co‐dominant mitochondrial marker was used to test the purity of bulked parental line (A‐line) seed utilizing CE system in a genetic analyzer. The results indicate that this method is very simple, accurate, and can be used to test purity of large number of samples rapidly in a cost‐effective way compared to grow‐out test and conventional molecular marker analysis.