Linkage analysis, GWAS, transcriptome analysis to identify candidate genes for rice seedlings in response to high temperature stress

BACKGROUND: Rice plants suffer from the rising temperature which is becoming more and more prominent. Mining heat-resistant genes and applying them to rice breeding is a feasible and effective way to solve the problem. RESULT: Three main biomass traits, including shoot length, dry weight, and fresh weight, changed after abnormally high-temperature treatment in the rice seedling stage of a recombinant inbred lines and the natural indica germplasm population. Based on a comparison of the results of linkage analysis and genome-wide association analysis, two loci with lengths of 57 kb and 69 kb in qDW7 and qFW6, respectively, were associated with the rice response to abnormally high temperatures at the seedling stage. Meanwhile, based on integrated transcriptome analysis, some genes are considered as important candidate genes. Combining with known genes and analysis of homologous genes, it was found that there are eight genes in candidate intervals that need to be focused on in subsequent research. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated several relevant loci, which would help researchers to further discover beneficial heat-resistant genes that can be applied to rice heat-resistant breeding. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12870-021-02857-2.