SCAN: When rice doesn't need salt...

ITQB Scan Seminar

Title: When rice doesn’t need salt...

Speaker: Sónia Negrão

From: Post-Doc researcher at Genomics of Plant Stress Laboratory

Abstract:

Soil salinity is a key abiotic stress in crop productivity worldwide. Rice (Oryza sativa L.), the staple food for more than half of the world’s population, is the most sensitive cereal to salt stress. With the increasing importance of rice salinity, breeder’s main concern is to find new responsive alleles.
In rice, differences among genotypes account for its response towards salinity. Aiming to find alleles associated with salinity tolerance we used the EcoTILLING technique to explore the natural variability existing in 392 rice germplasm accessions at key genes related to salt stress. This mini-core collection is representative of the large morphological, physiological, and ecological variation available in domesticated rice. The five targeted key salt-related genes have been previously described and characterized as related to salt-tolerance enhancement in rice, through different mechanisms such as Na+/K+ ratio equilibrium, signaling cascade and stress protection.  Our sequence results included hundreds of SNPs (Single Nucleotides Polymorphisms) and small INDELs, with a total of 40 new allelic variants resulting in 31 different proteins. We further evaluated the putative consequences of these SNPs at the protein level using bioinformatic tools, and will show their effect.
Aiming to understand the influence of salt stress at reproductive stage, we are currently addressing how salinity affects pollen development through the analysis of anther proteome. We will present our most recent data and discuss the importance of breeding efforts for salt tolerance.