Young healthy leaves of germinating rice seeds are taken for DNA fingerprinting analysis. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, June 26: The State Seed Testing Laboratory at Samantarapur has conducted DNA fingerprinting on eight rice varieties. It also plans to conduct fingerprinting on all 900 types of rice it has in its collection.

DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is the genetic material in an animal or plant that carries hereditary characters from one generation to another.

DNA fingerprinting is carried out to find out the genetic makeup of an organism or plant. Each DNA profile is different from the other, just as human fingerprints are.

While carrying out DNA fingerprinting for rice varieties, the lab can separate pure ones from those with mixed characteristics or different parentage.

“DNA fingerprinting is done in criminal investigation to find out the origin of someone whose body is beyond recognition or where the parents of a baby are unknown. But in case of cereals, we carry out the process so that the origin and purity of rice varieties are detected at the molecular level,” said assistant agriculture officer-cum-seed analyst at the seed lab Chakradhar Panda.

During the process, scientists carry out molecular sequencing so that when breeders want to look for particular qualities during breeding, they can identify these easily.

For example, special qualities such as resistance to flood, drought and submergence are each related to a particular DNA of rice variety.

In future, scientists can refer to the lab’s database and work on better varieties for the different agro-climatic zones in the state.

First, scientists produce seedlings from the rice seeds and from the extracts of the tender leaves. Then DNA sequencing is carried out.

The DNA fingerprinting tests are done through polymerase chain reaction machines, which produce bar codes similar to the bar code we see on price tags on items at the departmental store.

The sequencing of the DNA fragments in the genetic material of rice varieties will appear as a series of bar codes on the machine’s report, said a scientist.

Director, agriculture, R.S. Gopalan said: “We have done the sequencing of eight varieties in the past month. As a considerable time was spent on setting up the laboratory and procuring the chemicals, we will be conducting more tests to cover our entire collection.”