Abstract: Temperate japonica rice plays a very important role in food security.
In this study, a set of 191 temperate japonica accessions from 30 countries
were planted in two sites in China, and 12 agronomic traits were measured.
The results showed a wide range of variation for the traits measured. Most of
the accessions are short; three accessions with large panicles and seven accessions
with large grains were identified. Sixty-two quantitative trait loci (QTLs)
were identified for 12 traits that were measured. Among them, twenty-one
QTLs were identified in both experiments, and 41 QTLs were identified in only
one site. Some known genes are located in the QTL regions identified in our
study. SNP markers for grain size were identified and could be efficiently used
for breeding selection. This study provided useful information for future gene
validation and marker assisted selection for some important agronomic traits
of temperate japonica rice.