Morphological changes analysis of rice cv. IR64 under drought stress

Abiotic stress is one of major constraints in crop production worldwide. Drought is the most important abiotic stress that has a huge impact on plant growth and productivity. Rice is one of the crops that is sensitive to water limited conditions and prolong drought stress causes yield loss. Many genes are also affected by drought stress and information on their expression changes under drought is important to understand the molecular mechanism of plant response to drought. The objectives of this study are to determine the effect of drought on rice morphological changes and to isolate a high quality of RNAs that can be used for expression analysis. Drought treatment was imposed on the rice seedlings for four weeks and the morphological changes were assessed every week. The shoot and the root of rice were harvested every week for RNA isolation using Trizol® Reagents. The quantity and quality of isolated total RNAs were analyzed by the NanoDrop spectrophotometer and gel electrophoresis.