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Many of the economically important rice cultivars including ‘Khao Dawk Mali 105’ (KDML105) or jasmine rice, one of the world’s famous rice exported from Thailand suffers from drought due to erratic rainfalls and limited irrigation. To improve drought tolerance and reserve genetic background of KDML105, chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSL) containing drought tolerant quantitative trait loci (DT-QTL) has been previously developed by backcrossing between KDML105 and drought tolerant donor, IR58586-F2-CA-143 (DH212). To understand the physiological responses related to drought tolerance in CSSL lines compared to parents, two CSSLs namely CSSL1-16 and CSSL1-18, respectively were used in this study. Twenty-one-d-old hydroponically grown plants were subjected to 20% PEG for 0, 7, 14 d and then recovered from stress for 3 d. The results indicated that CSSL lines especially, CSSL1-16 showed better performance under drought stress compared to their recurrent parent. Drought tolerance superior CSSL1-16 line was indicated by high water status (high relative water content and leaf water potential), good osmotic adjustment, high proline and greater membrane stability. Moreover, this line was able to resume growth after stress recovery whereas other lines/cultivar could not recover. Similarly, drought tolerant donor showed high water status suggesting that well-maintained plant water status was associated with drought tolerant trait. It could be concluded that the highest drought tolerant line was CSSL1-16 followed by DH212, CSSL1-18 and KDML105. It would be interesting to go further into introgressed section in CSSL1-16 to identify potential candidate genes in DT-QTL for breeding drought tolerant rice in the future.

Understanding specific biological processes involving in salt tolerance mechanisms is important for improving traits conferring tolerance to salinity, one of the most important abiotic stresses in plants. Under drought and salinity stresses, plants share overlapping responsive mechanisms such as physiological changes and activation of signaling molecules, which induce and transmit signals through regulator genes in a regulatory network. In this study, two near isogenic lines of rice carrying chromosome segments of drought tolerance QTL on chromosome 8 from IR68586-F2-CA-31 (DH103) in the genetic background of sensitive cultivar “Khao Dawk Mali 105; KDML105” (designated as CSSL8-94 and CSSL8-95) were used to investigate physiological responses to salt stress [namely growth, Na+/K+ ratio, water status, osmotic adjustment, photosynthetic parameters, electrolyte leakage (EL), malondialdehyde (MDA), proline and sugar accumulations], compared with the standard salt tolerant (Pokkali; PK) and their recurrent parent (KDML105) rice cultivars. Physiological examination indicated that both CSSLs showed superior salt-tolerant level to KDML105. Our results suggested that salt tolerance ability of these CSSL lines may be resulted from high performance photosynthesis, better osmotic adjustment, and less oxidative stress damage under salt conditions. Moreover, to explore new candidate genes that might take part in salt tolerance mechanisms, we performed co-expression network analysis for genes identified in the CSSL rice, and found that Os08g419090, the gene involved with tetrapyrrole and porphyrin biosynthetic process (chlorophyll biosynthetic process), Os08g43230 and Os08g43440 (encoded TraB family protein and cytochrome P450, respectively) might have unprecedented roles in salt stress tolerance.

Two osmoprotectants (proline -Pro; trehalose -Tre) were exogenously supplied to seedlings of rice cvs. Pokkali (PK -salt-tolerant) and Khao Dawk Mali 105 (KDML105 -salt-sensitive) to investigate their effects on plants exposed to 200 mmol/L NaCl for 6 days and 5 days after recovery from stress. The reduction of growth, increase in Na + to K + ratio, high level of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) content, enhanced activity of antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase -SOD, peroxidase -POX, catalase -CAT and ascorbate peroxidase -APX) were observed in both rice cultivars under NaCl treatments. Exogenous Pro and Tre supplement to NaCl-stressed plants did not mitigate the reduction of growth during salt-stress. Nevertheless, during recovery plants previously supplied with Tre showed markedly higher percentage of growth recovery than those treated with NaCl alone or supplied with Pro. The beneficial effect of Tre on growth recovery was clearly demonstrated in KDML105 in which growth enhancement was related to reduction in Na + to K + ratio. Exogenous Pro was able to reduce H 2 O 2 in both cultivars during salt stress whereas Tre could reduce it only in KDML105. Exogenous Tre did not enhance any antioxidant enzymes during stress but enhanced APX activity in KDML105 during recovery. Exogenous Pro enhanced the activity of APX in PK, and POX, CAT and APX in KDML105 during both stress and recovery period.

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