Abstract
BackgroundSoil salinity is an abiotic stress wide spread in rice producing areas, limiting both plant growth and yield. The development of salt-tolerant rice requires efficient and high-throughput screening techniques to identify promising lines for salt affected areas. Advances made in image-based phenotyping techniques provide an opportunity to use non-destructive imaging to screen for salinity tolerance traits in a wide range of germplasm in a reliable, quantitative and efficient way. However, the application of image-based phenotyping in the development of salt-tolerant rice remains limited.ResultsA non-destructive image-based phenotyping protocol to assess salinity tolerance traits of two rice cultivars (IR64 and Fatmawati) has been established in this study. The response of rice to different levels of salt stress was quantified over time based on total shoot area and senescent shoot area, calculated from visible red-green-blue (RGB) and fluorescence images. The response of rice to salt stress (50, 75 and 100 mM NaCl) could be clearly distinguished from the control as indicated by the reduced increase of shoot area. The salt concentrations used had only a small effect on the growth of rice during the initial phase of stress, the shoot Na+ accumulation independent phase termed the ‘osmotic stress’ phase. However, after 20 d of treatment, the shoot area of salt stressed plants was reduced compared with non-stressed plants. This was accompanied by a significant increase in the concentration of Na+ in the shoot. Variation in the senescent area of the cultivars IR64 and Fatmawati in response to a high concentration of Na+ in the shoot indicates variation in tissue tolerance mechanisms between the cultivars.ConclusionsImage analysis has the potential to be used for high-throughput screening procedures in the development of salt-tolerant rice. The ability of image analysis to discriminate between the different aspects of salt stress (shoot ion-independent stress and shoot ion dependent stress) makes it a useful tool for genetic and physiological studies to elucidate processes that contribute to salinity tolerance in rice. The technique has the potential for identifying the genetic basis of these mechanisms and assisting in pyramiding different tolerance mechanisms into breeding lines.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12284-014-0016-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Soil salinity is an abiotic stress wide spread in rice producing areas, limiting both plant growth and yield
Non-destructive imaging is important when measuring the dynamic response of individual plants to the onset of between biomass and projected shoot area will still be strong for older plants, if running experiments on older plants this should be confirmed, in case there are issues of areas of the plant being hidden from the camera by other parts of the plant
IR64 and Fatmawati differ in their response to salt stress IR64 and Fatmawati were grown in soil under moderate (0, 50, 75 and 100 mM NaCl) and high (0, 100, 150 and 200 mM NaCl) salt stress
Summary
Soil salinity is an abiotic stress wide spread in rice producing areas, limiting both plant growth and yield. The development of salt-tolerant rice requires efficient and high-throughput screening techniques to identify promising lines for salt affected areas. Advances made in image-based phenotyping techniques provide an opportunity to use non-destructive imaging to screen for salinity tolerance traits in a wide range of germplasm in a reliable, quantitative and efficient way. The application of image-based phenotyping in the development of salt-tolerant rice remains limited. Salinity is a major abiotic stress that threatens the sustainability of global rice production. One of the limiting factors in the breeding of salt tolerant rice is the availability of efficient and reliable screening techniques to select tolerant plants (Gregorio et al 2002)
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