Impact of Drought Adaptive Mechanism on Root and Root Associated Trait of Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Roots play a vital role in plants for a wide variety of processes, including nutrient and water uptake, anchoring and mechanical support. Some phenomenal literature supports several root characters which have relevance for stress adaptation. Root characteristics such as root length density, rooting depth and root distribution have been established as constituting factors of drought resistance. Under drought situation, roots can adapt to continued growth while at the same time, sending signals to shoot that exhibit growth an above ground parts of the plant. Development of plants with deep roots may in fact stimulate photosynthetic yields as these are considered to be more controlled by the carbon sinks of plants. In this context a field experiment was conducted during Kharif -2014 in the Department of Crop Physiology, to know the effect and variations in mutants of Rice for root and root associated traits along with growth and productivity besides a few relevant drought adaptive traits. The result revealed that, the root length ranged from 24.46 cm to 38.00 cm with a mean of 32.40 cm, while wild Type recorded 32.33 cm. Similarly, the root volume and root weight recorded 21.67cc to 65cc with a mean 35.51cc and 4 g to as high as 34.30 g with a mean of 17.13g when compared to Wild Type (27.92 cc and 18.49g respectively). The total dry matter production ranged from 16.39 g-1plant to 92.12 g-1plant with a mean of 52.73 g-1 plant while, the Wild type had a total dry matter production of 55.12 g-1plant. Mutants shows significant variations in root length, root volume, root weight and total dry matter production as compared to wild type and also observe the significant variation among the mutant. These mutants with higher growth character associated with root traits are potential mutant lines for further crop improvement programme.