Sagar Sreevathsa, Ramamoorthy Pushpam, Ramalingam Suresh, Muthurajan Raveendran, Natarajan Sritharan, Doraiswamy Uma, Subramanian Santhiya
Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India.
Directorate of Research, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India.
Mol Biol Rep. 2025 Mar 10;52(1):298. doi: 10.1007/s11033-025-10405-6.
Rice, a staple food for significant percent of the world's population, is increasingly vulnerable to drought stress, threatening global food security. This review synthesizes current knowledge on drought's physiological impact on rice, highlighting key mechanisms, responses, and adaptations. Drought stress alters rice physiology at various stages, from seed germination to grain filling, affecting yield, quality, and nutrient content. Drought tolerance in rice is influenced by physiological traits such as root architecture and depth, stomatal regulation and water use efficiency, Osmo-protectants and antioxidant defences, hormone signalling and stress response pathways. Genetic diversity and molecular breeding have enhanced drought resilience in rice, with key genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) controlling drought tolerance identified, enabling marker-assisted selection and genetic engineering. Despite progress, challenges persist, including limited understanding of drought's impact on rice physiology under field conditions, inefficient screening methods for drought tolerance, and insufficient attention to drought's effects on rice quality and nutritional content. To address these gaps, integrating physiology, genetics, and agronomy for holistic drought mitigation strategies is crucial. Developing high-throughput phenotyping tools for drought tolerance screening and investigating drought's impact on rice grain quality and nutritional content are essential. This review provides a comprehensive framework for understanding drought's physiological footprint in rice and guiding future research toward improving drought tolerance and resilience.
水稻是世界上很大一部分人口的主食，它越来越容易受到干旱胁迫的影响，这对全球粮食安全构成了威胁。这篇综述综合了当前关于干旱对水稻生理影响的知识，重点介绍了关键机制、反应和适应情况。干旱胁迫在从种子萌发到灌浆的各个阶段都会改变水稻的生理状况，影响产量、品质和营养成分。水稻的耐旱性受根系结构和深度、气孔调节和水分利用效率、渗透保护剂和抗氧化防御、激素信号传导和胁迫反应途径等生理特性的影响。遗传多样性和分子育种提高了水稻的耐旱恢复力，已鉴定出控制耐旱性的关键基因和数量性状位点（QTL），从而实现了标记辅助选择和基因工程。尽管取得了进展，但挑战依然存在，包括对田间条件下干旱对水稻生理影响的了解有限、耐旱性筛选方法效率低下，以及对干旱对水稻品质和营养成分影响的关注不足。为了弥补这些差距，将生理学、遗传学和农学结合起来制定全面的抗旱策略至关重要。开发用于耐旱性筛选的高通量表型分析工具以及研究干旱对水稻籽粒品质和营养成分的影响至关重要。这篇综述提供了一个全面的框架，用于理解干旱在水稻中的生理印记，并指导未来的研究以提高耐旱性和恢复力。
