Neurice Project-Identification of genes involved in salt tolerance in rice: GWAS approach

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most salt-sensitive crops although cultivars can differ in their response to salt stress. In European coastal rice areas there is an increasing tendency toward salinization of the paddy fields where rice is grown. Thus, the identification of rice cultivars tolerant to salt stress and the dissection of salt stress tolerance mechanisms are of high interest for European rice breeding. The plant response to salt stress is a complex trait that depends on the combination of many genes and metabolic pathways, difficult to control and engineer. Exploiting natural variation in worldwide genotypes may be a powerful approach to discover new genes involved in salt tolerance. In this context, a wide-range phenotyping activity has been performed to study the natural variation of a japonica rice collection (281 cultivars) in the responses to mild-salt stress followed by a genome wide association study (GWAS) aimed at the identification of significant loci putatively involved in salt tolerance. The reported data concern: i) Seed germination and emergence phase in salt condition; ii) Phenotyping during the whole life cycle of 281 japonica accessions and RILs; iii) Short-term salt responses in the early vegetative phase (transpiration rate inhibition and Na/K ratio).