1 Introduction

Rice is a grass “autogame” a tall crop growing more easily in

the tropics. Rice belongs to family “ Poaceae ”. The genus Oryza

includes 24 species of which two are cultivated : “Oryza sativa L”

which originated in the humid tropic of Asia, and “ O glaberrima”

from West Africa. Asian cultivated rice has evolved into three

ecogeographic races – “Indica”, Japonica” and “Javanica”. Rice is

tolerant to desert, hot, humid, flooded, dry and cool conditions and

grows in saline, alkaline and acidic soils. Today rice is grown in more

then 100 countries, ranging from mountainous Himalayan to lowland

delta areas.

The association between rice and human community was

clearly indicated in the exciting excavations at the He – Mu – Du, Luo

– Jiao - Jia in China where rice was a principal food plant in the

developing human settlements there more then 7,000 years ago. At

present rice is an important source of food for more then half of the

world population (Anonymous, 1996) and after wheat, rice is the

second most important crop of the world more then 90% is currently

growing in India.(IRRI,2006).

Rice is an important cereal food crop of India. It occupies

about 23.3% of gross cropped area of the country. Rice contributes

about 43% of total food grain production of 46% of the cereal

production of the country ( Kush, 1979). Almost 90% of the

world’s rice is produced in Asia, China is the world’s leading

Introduction
producer, growing 2/5 of the Asia’s total on 32 million hectares. India

possesses the largest rice area (44 million hectares) producing

nearly a quarter of Asia.

In terms of productivity even though the area of rice

cultivation is less in Europe ( 0.59 million ha), it recorded higher rice

productivity (5.89 t/ha). Due to lack of the high yielding varieties and

advance technologies, African country could able to attain less

productivity of 1.88t /ha.

There are generally several biotic and abiotic factors that

adversely affect the productivity via. physiology of plant. Rice is

generally affected by the water deficit, submergence salinity and

deficiency of zinc and phosphorus (Wissuwa, 2008).

Phosphorus deficiency is one of the major limiting factor that

limits crop production in highly wethered soils and in many part of

world soils particularly prone to P deficiency are coarse – textured

with small amount of the reserves ( e.g sandy soil in northeast

Thailand, Cambodia), highly weathered with higher P fixation

capacity , degraded lowland soil ( e.g North Vietnam), calcareous,

saline and sodic soils ,volcanic soils with high P- absorption capacity,

peat soils, acid sulfate soils (Dahal,1977)

Phosphorus after the nitrogen is the key element for plant

growth that limits the 40-50% of crop productivity throughout the

world. Phosphorus is an essential constituent of the ATP, nucleic acid

and phospholipids, it is major function is energy storage and

membrane integrity . Phosphorus is mobile with in the plant and

Introduction
promotes tillering, root development, early flowering, and ripening. It

is most important for the early growth stages of plants.

Generally total phosphorus content of most soils is low,

averaging only 0.6% phosphorus. This compares to an average soil

content of India 0.14% nitrogen and 0.83% of potassium. Although P

is widely distributed in nature, it is not found as the elemental form,

elemental phosphorus is extremely reactive and combines with

oxygen when exposed to air (Fox,1981). In soil it generally exists as

orthophosphate species ( H 3Po4, H2Po4-, and HPo42- ) depending

upon pH. The availability of phosphate is generally higher above pH

6.5, becomes very low at 6.0, because of fixation. ( Abel et al.,

2002)

Phosphorus deficiency in general can be corrected by the initial

application of large quantity of phosphorus. However, farmers are

facing difficulties with increase in the cost of the fertilizers,

especially in developing countries. The possibility of exploiting

genotypic differences in absorption and utilization of P to improve

efficiency of P fertilizers use or to obtain higher productivity on P-

deficient soils has received considerable attention in recent years

( Cakmak,2002) . P fertilizers are manufactured from nonrenewable

resources that are increasingly becoming more costly and less

available to resource poor farmers, these resources as per some

estimates will get depleted by 2060.

Plants usually posses many mechanisms to enhance the

efficiency of the uptake and utilization of available phosphorus.

Introduction
These mechanisms includes mycorrhizal symbiosis (Bagyaraj and

Verma, 1995 ), remobilization of internal organic phosphates,

exudation of organic compound like “citrates” for efficient utilization

of phosphorus from the soil ( Kirk and Santos,1999). In addition

plants develop many alternative pathway that are quite different

from usual pathways that doesn’t require the phosphorus.

Plants generally shows two types of mechanism against the

low phosphorus stress i.e an internal mechanism that involves the

efficient utilization of internal phosphorus content and an external

mechanism that allows greater uptake of the phosphorus from the

soil.

( Wissuwa and Ae, 2002). An extensive root system unable the

plant to have more uptake of P from the soil.

Molecular mechanisms are found to work that has been

characterized from various organisms. In case of the E. coli and

Brewer's Yeast multigene inducible system called “Pho-regulon ” is

found that enable the plant to scavenge any available traces of

organic phosphates from the soil ( Torriani and Ludte,1990).Acid

phosphatase help in the mobilization of phosphate from the cellular

and extracellular organic compounds.

QTL analysis had lead to characterization and mapping of one

major QTL for phosphorus uptake pup1 isolated from Chromosome

12 of rice variety with tolerance to low phosphorus ( Wissuwa et

al,2007).

Introduction
 Analysis of this pup1 showed a three times more uptake rate

as compaired to non tolerant line that lacks the pup1 ( Wissuwa,

yano and Ae., 2007). In the maize P73 proteins have been

identified by the two dimensional electrophoresis that are expressed

under phosphors starvation. Similar factors i.e P95 have been

characterized in rice ( Wissuwa and Ae, 2009), these proteins are

responsible Pi solublization and Pi absorption. Mutants displayed

specialized P efficient system with a higher capacity for mobilization

of internal Pi and increased cell division under P starved conditions

( Wissuwa and Ae., 2009).

Tissue culture provides an efficient way to produce improved

variants against many problems associated with rice, suitable for

crop improvement. A number of authors observed variation among

the regenerated plants and their progenies during embryoid

formation from pollen calli. P.J Larkin and W.R Scowcroft(1981) plant

industry division,CSIRO Australia gave the name “Somaclonal

variation” to the genetic variability originated as a result of tissue

culture conditions. The mass occurrence of the somaclonal variants

increase in resistance, productivity are vital force of plant (the

heterotic effects) are explained by the “Carlson” (1983). Screening

of Somaclones for various kinds of stresses like drought, salt has

lead to development of tolerant lines against different kinds of

stresses. The production of the embryogenic calli from different

parts of plants like seeds, coleoptile and immature embryo highly

depends upon the genotype of plant.Common variations among

Introduction
samaclones includes tillers per plants, plant height, flag leaf length,

panicle length and number of seeds produced (Karp,1995).

Keeping the above facts in mind regarding tissue culture the

present investigation was carried out with the following objectives .

(1) Development of somaclones against low phosphate stress

(2) Regeneration and acclimatisation of “P” tolerant samaclones

(3) Biochemical and physiological characterization of selected

somaclones.

Introduction