The Use Of GAMMA Irradiation To Produce Drought Resistant Rices

Rice is one of the most important food crops for human. Among factors such as climate, soil, weed and pest, drought is a major constraint to the rice production. Therefore, besides the production of high yield, the development of drought resistant rice for upland is a practical sense requirement. C71 is the blast resistant cultivar having good quality and has been widely grown in Northern provinces. However, its drought resistance is at intermediate level. In this paper, we present the results on the use of gamma irradiation in production of drought resistant mutants in C71 rice cultivar with an attempt to develop this cultivar for water-limited prone. The dry seeds of C71 were irradiated with the doses of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 krad. After irradiation, the seeds were germinated, and 10 days-old seedlings were treated with PEG 6000 for artificial drought screening. The results on PEG treatments, showed that the survival percentages of irradiated lines were increased comparing to the control lines. The molecular analysis indicated that there were alterations in the genome of the obtained rice lines. The lines could be useful material for development of drought resistant rice. (author)