Diversity in major seed storage proteins of rice landraces of pakistan

Grain proteins from 173 rice landraces (oryza sativa l.) were electrophoretically separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gelelectrophoresis (sds-page). densitometric scanning of the electrophoretic profiles permitted the estimation of the relative concentration of 25polypeptide fractions,which were used as variables for the calculation of similarity coefficients between these accessions. a considerablevariation was observed in glutelin subunits and wx gene product. very low variation was observed in prolamin subunits. lower genetic distancebased on total seed protein profile may be attributed to narrow genetic base. this electrophoretically detectable protein polymorphism in ricegrain can be used in further breeding proposes and variety development. our results suggest that screening of landraces on the basis of variationin seed storage protein profile using sds-page could be highly effective tool to identify valuable rice genetic resources.