Wild species are excellent reservoirs of important genes, many a times that are not found in cultivated gene pool. Canonically rice plant is salt sensitive though few genotypes are salinity tolerant which have been extensively used as donor in salinity breeding program of rice. Thus there is a need to discover alternative favourable alleles/genes that give better salinity tolerant. Oryza coarctata is an wild species that can grow up to maximum EC value of 40 E.Ce (electrical conductivity) dS/m2.. It is mainly found in the coastal region of South Asian countries. Unfortunately, the conventional crossing of this plant is not very successful with rice.
Thus to find out the cause of low breeding success as well as salinity tolerant mechanisms, we did cytogenetic, genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics study of this species. While decoding the nuclear genome along with transcriptomic studies gave several novel salt tolerant genes, metabolomics study indicated allantoin a key compound that might be responsible for its salinity tolerance. Further transgenic Arabidopsis plant with over expressed allantoin biosynthesis gene indicated that it renders salinity stress through some hormonal pathways. A details account of our research finding of this species related to allantoin and its conservation will be delivered in my talk.
