Designing a Mini-Core Collection Effectively Representing 3004 Diverse Rice Accessions

Genetic diversity provides the foundation for plant breeding and genetic research. Over 3000 rice genomes were recently sequenced as part of the 3K Rice Genome (3KRG) Project. We added four additional Indian rice accessions to create a panel of 3004 accessions. However, such a large collection of germplasm is difficult to preserve and evaluate. The construction of core and mini-core collections is an efficient method for the management of genetic resources. In this study, we developed a mini-core comprising 520 accessions that captured most of the SNPs and represented all of the phenotypes and geographic regions from the original panel. The mini-core was validated using different statistical analyses and contained representatives from all major rice groups, including japonica, indica, aus/boro, and aromatic/basmati. Genome-wide association analyses of the mini-core panel efficiently reproduced the marker–trait associations identified in the original panel. Haplotype analysis validated the utility of the mini-core panel. In the current era with many ongoing large-scale sequencing projects, such a strategy for mini-core design should be useful in many crops. The rice mini-core collection developed in this study would be valuable for agronomic trait evaluation and useful for rice improvement via marker-assisted molecular breeding.