“…Therefore, the effects of exposure to O 3 on physiological processes of rice need to be studied as a basis of dry matter production and yield formation. When exposed to O 3 , rice plants suffer damage such as the inhibition of net photosynthetic rate (P N ), stomatal conductance to CO 2 transfer (g s ), photosystem II (PSII) (Imai and Kobori, 2008;Kobayakawa and Imai, 2011a), decreased ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase / oxygenase (Ishioh and Imai, 2005), chlorophyll and carotenoid Rai and Agrawal, 2008) contents and nitrite reductase activity (Kobayakawa and Imai, 2011b), in addition to breakdown of the cellular ultrastructure (Toyama et al, 1989) and visible leaf-related symptoms (Imai and Kobori, 2008). Furthermore, O 3 suppresses the growth rate (Imai and Ookoshi, 2011), alters photoassimilate partitioning (Nouchi et al, 1995) and ultimately decreases the grain yield (Reid and Fiscus, 2008;Yamaguchi et al, 2008;Pang et al, 2009;Rai et al, 2010;Imai and Ookoshi, 2011).…”