Swapna Simon
Kerala Agricultural University, India
Title: Effect of osmotic stress in rice (Oryza sativa L) under water deficit conditions
Biography
Biography: Swapna Simon
Abstract
Drought is a complex trait and the expression of drought resistance depends on action and interaction of different morphological, physiological and biochemical characters which triggers genetic responses towards drought avoidance and tolerance. The present study was conducted for the evaluation of osmotic stress responses in Kerala rice (Oryza sativa L) under water deficit conditions and for the effective identification of the best Kerala rice varieties with drought tolerance. The present paper focuses the morpho-physiological, biochemical and molecular characterization of a set of 42 high yielding rice varieties collected from various research stations of KAU under different ecological zones along with the variety Sahbhagi dhan (IR 74371-70-1-1-CRR-1) and the Jyothi as the tolerant and susceptible checks. The rice varieties were initially screened in PEG 6000 induced Yoshida nutrient medium and the selected drought tolerant varieties were pot cultured in a completely randomized design with three replications was used for the stressed and non stressed experiment. The high correlation of morpho-physiological and biochemical responses under drought over normal conditions, such as leaf rolling, phenotypic variations, relative water content (RWC) of leaf, photosynthetic pigments, cell membrane stability, osmolytes accumulation, antioxidant enzymatic responses along with the high drought recovery scoring pattern pointed towards the identification of the best varieties. The overall performance of the varieties Swarnaprabha (Ptb 43) and Kattamodan (Ptb 28) show positive adaptive responses towards drought stress than other varieties. This work is a step towards genetic improvement for drought tolerance in upland rice (Oryza sativa L) cultivation.