Quality of Seeds of Upland Rice Lines Adapted to the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Heloisa Oliveira Dos Santos,Flávia Barbosa Silva Botelho,Ana Cláudia De Amorim Fonseca,Edila Vilela De Resende Von Pinho,Ricardo Kenji Uenojo,Marcela Pedroso Mendes

doi:10.4236/ajps.2015.612193

Heloisa Oliveira Dos Santos, Flávia Barbosa Silva Botelho + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2015.612193

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Abstract

In the final stages of a plant breeding program, a crucial step is the multiplication of seeds in production fields. Besides a solid planning, the seeds multiplication needs a special attention to guarantee seeds with high quality, genetic integrity, high germination and vigor to the farmer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physiologic quality, enzymatic expression and respiratory activity of seeds of 20 elite upland rice lines adapted to the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, from the upland rice breeding program from three Brazilians research institutions. The quality parameters evaluated were root protrusion, number of normal seedlings in the germination test, number of normal seedlings in the germination first count, initial stand from emergence test, speed of emergence index, seedlings shoot and root length, percentage of O2 and CO2 from respiratory activity and the expression pattern of the enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH). The seeds quality varied among lines, allowing the selection of lines with best performance. The respiratory activity was lower in seeds of lines with high quality. The enzyme ADH was an excellent marker to infer about the quality of seeds, and the variation in the expression of MDH did not depend on the quality of rice seeds. The lines BRS Esmeralda, CMG1896 and CMG1509 showed high physiologic quality in their seeds, and therefore, they should receive higher attention in rice breeding programs.

Highlights

Consumed by more than half of the world’s population, rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most cultivated crops in the world, and the most important crop in many development countries, playing a strategic role in economic and social politics [1].The world rice production was nearly 724 millions of tons in 2014 [2]
The field experiment was located in the EPAMIG experimental station in Patos de Minas-MG, Brazil, and a sample of the seeds from each line were sent to the Central Seeds Lab from the Agriculture Department of UFLA to perform the quality tests
Significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) between rice lines were detected in the analyses of variance for all characters: root protrusion, number of normal seedlings in the germination test (GT), number of normal seedlings in the germination first count (GFC), initial stand from emergence test (ET), speed of emergence index (SEI) and respiratory analysis (RA)

Summary

Introduction

Consumed by more than half of the world’s population, rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most cultivated crops in the world, and the most important crop in many development countries, playing a strategic role in economic and social politics [1]. The world rice production was nearly 724 millions of tons in 2014 [2]. Brazil is the only non-Asian country that is among the ten biggest producers of rice, producing almost 12,400 millions of tons in 2344 hectares in the. In the 80s, the upland rice has come to represent 61% of the planted area in the state of Minas Gerais [3]. The low productivity, the absence of adapted genotypes and the competition with irrigated rice from the south of Brazil contributed to the drastic reduction of the area with upland rice in the state of Minas Gerais

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