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Decrease in the grain yield resulted from a low percentage of opened spikelets under high temperature (HT) during anthesis is a serious problem in the seed production of photo-thermo-sensitive genic male sterile (ptGMS) rice (Oryza sativa L.) lines, and the mechanism is little understood. elucidating the physiological mechanism underlying the effect of HT during anthesis on spikelet-opening of PTGMS lines would have great significance in exploring the effective way to mitigate the adverse effect of HT. In this study, two PTGMS lines and one restorer line of rice were used and were subjected to normal temperature (NT) and HT treatments. The results showed that, compared with NT, HT significantly decreased the percentage of opened spikelets, fertilization percentage and seed-setting by significantly increasing the percentage of wrapped spikelets and reducing the spikelet-opening angle, length of spikelet-opening time. The HT significantly decreased the contents of soluble sugars, jasmonic acid (JA) and methyl jasmonate (MeJA) in the lodicules before and at glume-opening, which were significantly correlated with and accounts for the low percentage of opened spikelets under HT for rice, especially for the ptGMS lines.Male sterility in cereals has played a critical role in the utilization of heterosis by facilitating hybrid breeding and greatly contributed to the increase in productivity for many crops such as rice (Oryza sativa L). The establishment of the breeding theory and technology of the "two-line method" hybrid rice (hereinafter referred to as the two-line hybrid rice), especially photo-thermo-sensitive genic male sterile (PTGMS) rice lines, is another major scientific and technological innovation in the utilization of heterosis after the "three-line method" hybrid rice application 1-7 . Compared with three-line hybrid rice with nuclear-plasma interaction pollen sterility as the core technology in a hybrid rice system, two-line hybrid rice can easily maintain sterile line production without using maintainer lines. Moreover, two-line hybrid rice also has many other advantages, such as a wider range of germplasm resources which can be used as breeding parents, greater heterosis, and simpler procedures for breeding and hybrid seed production 2,3,7-10 . Today, the annual planting area of two-line hybrid rice in China has exceeded 5 million hectares, which has become a main way using heterosis in rice 3,11-15 . However, the fertility of PTGMS rice line is easily affected by temperature and light. Usually, the PTGMS rice line tends to produce low purity of hybrid seeds due to self-cross at a low temperature (23-24 °C) in the seed production. The spikelets of PTGMS lines during anthesis could not open normally at high temperature (HT, ≥35 °C), which seriously reduces the hybrid seed yield 2,3,[11][12][13]16 .Temperature is an important ecological factor for plant growth. HT (≥35 °C) could seriously influence the growth and development of rice, at either vegetative or reproductive growth stage [17][18][19][20][21] . W...

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The plant steroid hormones brassinosteroids (BRs) play pivotal roles in modulating flower and fruit production. Nitrogen (N) is a key factor affecting rice (Oryza sativa L.) production. We hypothesized that BRs would respond to N application rates at spikelet differentiation (SD) and regulate spikelet degeneration in rice. Three rice cultivars were field‐grown and treated with five N rates at SD. Plant N and BRs contents, antioxidant capacity, and energy status were observed during meiosis in young panicles, and their relationships with spikelet degeneration were evaluated. In all the N treatments, the BRs, adenosine triphosphate, and energy charge levels, activities of the enzymes involved in energy metabolism, including cytochrome C oxidase and succinate dehydrogenase, total antioxidant capacity, and grain yield, were the highest, whereas hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content and vacuolar processing enzymes (VPE) genes expression levels, and spikelet degeneration rate were the lowest when plant N content was 2.6% during meiosis. The rice BRs‐deficient mutants showed substantial reduction in BRs levels, antioxidant capacity, and energy status, but great increase in H2O2 content, VPE genes expression levels, and spikelet degeneration rate than the wild type (WT); moreover, these parameters in WT panicles could be regulated, whereas in BRs‐deficient mutant panicles, they were not distinctly affected by N application. The results indicated that BRs mediate the effects of N rates on spikelet degeneration, and elevated BRs levels in rice panicles effectively inhibit spikelet degeneration when plant N content is 2.6% during meiosis by elevating antioxidant capacity and energy status.

The effect of crude extract (Ce), seed coating agent (SCA) and whole bacterial broth culture (WBC) of strains was evaluated against the causal agent of clubroot formation in Cruciferous vegetables. The ability of four strains ( 6-B-1, 6-T-4, 13-B-1 and ZST1-2) inhibited of resting spores and disease. Application of WBC of four strains inhibited clubroot disease, indicating that the disease suppression was due to antifungal compounds produced by the biocontrol bacterium in the culture. Development of clubroot on Chinese cabbage was inhibited when the WBC and SCA were applied before inoculation. Crude extract (Ce) of culture filtrate was effective in arresting the germination of resting spores of on slides. However, strains differed in their biocontrol effects, the strain ZST1-2 recorded a high level of disease limiting effect.