Variations in Chlorophyll and Carotenoid Contents in Tungro Infected Rice Plants

Abstract

Sporadic tungro virus disease is considered as one of the most devastating viral diseases of rice and causes significant yield losses to sustainable annual rice productions in the world. An experiment was conducted to find out the influence of tungro disease on the chlorophyll and carotenoid content in fourteen rice cultivars of three groups viz., susceptible - MTU 1010, TN-1, IR 64, Tapaswini and IR 50 ; moderately resistant - Swarna , RP Bio 226, BPT 5204, Swarnadhan and Nidhi ; and resistant rice cultivars - Tamphaphou , TKM 6, IRTN 51 and Vikramarya. The virus isolate induced a considerable alteration in the pigment content by always exhibiting lesser amounts of chlorophyll ‘A’, chlorophyll ‘B’, total chlorophyll and carotenoid contents in the leaves of susceptible rice cultivars as compared to moderately resistant and resistant cultivars. Considerable reduction in seed weight has been observed in the susceptible rice cultivars compared to moderately resistant and resistant cultivars due to virus infection.