Physiological Characterisation of Salt-resistant Rice (Oryza sativa) Somaclones

Abstract

The progenies of 90 R0 plants regenerated from mature embryo-derived rice (Oryza sativa L.) calli obtained from two cultivars (I Kong Pao, salt-sensitive and Aiwu, moderately resistant) exposed to NaCl stress at various steps of in vitro culture, were screened for their salinity resistance in nutritive solution. Sixteen R1 families presented a higher survival rate in stress conditions than their corresponding initial cultivar and several of them exhibited an improvement in the mean number of spikelets per panicle and total grain weight produced per stressed plant. In four cases, the better behaviour of the somaclonal family could be related to physiological modifications such as a higher K+ :Na+ discrimination, preferential Na+ accumulation in the oldest leaves, lower decrease in cell membrane stability or higher tissue tolerance to internal Na+ accumulation. In some cases, these physiological properties were transmitted to R2 progenies. Heritabilities of yield-related parameters were quantified in control and stress conditions. The relationships between these parameters and the physiological behaviour of stressed material are discussed in relation to the effectiveness of in vitro culture techniques for the selection of salt-resistant plants in rice compared with a simple mass selection.

Response of sugarcane (Saccharum species hybrid) genotypes to embryogenic callus induction and in vitro salt stress

“…Plant tissue culture techniques provide a promising approach to develop salt-tolerant plants. In vitro selection of salt tolerant 1 3 cell lines and regenerated plants has been reported in several species such as potato (Sabbah and Tal, 1990), rice (Lutts et al, 1999); Hordeum (Sibi and Fakiri, 2000), wheat (Barakat and Abdel-Latif, 1996) and sunflower (Alvarez et al, 2003). This suggests that tissue culture selection can be used to improve salt tolerance of plants.…”

Detection of DNA changes in somaclonal mutants of rice using SSR markers and transposon display

“…Due to its small genome size, relative to other cereals, availability of the whole genome sequence (International Rice Genome Sequencing Project 2005), ease of regeneration and transformation (Hiei et al 1994), and availability of a variety of somaclonal mutants (Oono 1985;Adkins et al 1995;Lutts et al 1999;Gao et al 2002), rice is a model organism in molecular biology as well as in plant tissue culture studies. With the development of molecular techniques, various molecular markers have been developed and extensively used to analyze and evaluate genetic variation detected in plant tissue culture.…”

Selection of callus cultures of sugarcane (Saccharum sp.) tolerant to NaCl and their response to salt stress

“…Plant tissue culture techniques have been used to produce salt-tolerant cell lines and plants in several species such as wheat (Barakat and Abdel-Latif 1996), rice (Lutts et al 1999), barley (Sibi and Fakiri 2000), potato (Benavides et al 2000) and sunflower (Alvarez et al 2003). This suggests that tissue culture selection is an adequate model to select tolerant clone from overall non-tolerant populations and to research the adaptative mechanisms of plants living in saline environment.…”