Integrative physiological and transcriptomic analyses reveal distinct shoot and root adaptations to salinity in indica rice cultivars
摘要
An in vitro experiment was conducted to investigate physiological and molecular changes in nine rice (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica) cultivars grown under 0, 50, and 100 mM NaCl treatments. ANOVA results for both salt-susceptible and salt-resistant cultivars indicated that salinity had significant effects on all evaluated traits. The landrace Nona Bokra displayed the longest leaves, followed by BRRI dhan 28 and BRRI dhan 29, under 100 mM NaCl treatment. Increasing NaCl concentrations led to a reduction in both the number and length of seminal roots, with BINA dhan 5 showing the most pronounced decrease. Root hair density and length varied considerably among genotypes under stress; BRRI dhan 28, BRRI dhan 29, BINA dhan 8, and BINA dhan 10 exhibited enhanced adaptive responses to salinity. Principal component analysis revealed that most of the variation was explained by PC1 (23% of the total variance), while other components identified root architecture and biomass as key determinants of salt tolerance, supported by Pearson correlation coefficients. Gene expression analysis showed significant up-regulation of salt-responsive genes OsSOS1, OsNHX1, OsHAK10, and OsHKT7 in salt-resistant cultivar BINA dhan 10, whereas the salt-susceptible cultivar BRRI dhan 28 exhibited modest expression, indicating limited ability to mitigate cytosolic salt stress. In contrast, BRRI dhan 29 showed up-regulation of all four key genes, suggesting its potential as a candidate for developing finely tuned salt-resistant cultivars. These findings highlight substantial genetic diversity and suggest valuable morphological and molecular indicators for improving salt tolerance in rice breeding.