Systems level analysis of rice productivity traits under drought stress.

Drought stress affects rice during vegetative growth by reducing plant biomass and photosynthesis, and during flowering drastically affects grain yield components. To dissect the genetic variation for these productivity traits, we screened the USDA rice mini-core collection in the greenhouse and field, and find high correlations between specific greenhouse screened traits and grain yield under drought parameters in the field. Our progress on association analysis of these productivity traits in diverse genotypes to stress meta-QTL will be presented.

To develop an integrated model of stress response and tolerance pathways different -omics data was integrated into regulatory gene networks, and genetic perturbations characterized using mutant or overexpression lines of candidate genes to identify essential pathways determining grain yield under drought and other stresses.