Effects of Drought Stress on Growth and Accumulation of Proline in Five Rice Varieties (Oryza Sativa L.)

Abstract

A pot experiment was conducted to study the effect of drought stress on growth and accumulation of proline in five rice varieties namely BRRI dhan-30, BRRI dhan-32, BRRI dhan-34, BRRI dhan-38 and BRRI dhan-56 and to characterize them on the basis of their behavior of drought tolerance. Drought stress caused the decrease of growth like root length, shoot length, root fresh weight, shoot fresh weight, root dry weight, shoot dry weight, the ratio of root-shoot length. Among the rice varieties, BRRI dhan-56 showed the lowest decrease of growth of plant. BRRI dhan-56 showed the least decrease of water content in both root and shoot. On the other hand, the accumulation of proline was increased in five rice varieties under stress. BRRI dhan-56 showed the highest (3.7- folds) increase in the accumulation of proline in leaf under stress. This study suggests that BRRI dhan-56 may possess drought tolerance characteristics while BRRI dhan-30, BRRI dhan-32, BRRI dhan-34 and BRRI dhan-38 may be drought sensitive based on their growth and proline accumulation behavior. Asiat. Soc. Bangladesh, Sci. 45(2): 241-247, December 2019