Comparative transcriptome analysis highlights the crucial roles of photosynthetic system in drought stress adaptation in upland rice.

Drought stress is one of the major adverse environmental factors reducing plant growth. With the aim to elucidate the underlying molecular basis of rice response to drought stress, comparative transcriptome analysis was conducted between drought susceptible rice cultivar Zhenshan97 and tolerant cultivar IRAT109 at the seedling stage. 436 genes showed differential expression and mainly enriched in the Gene Ontology (GO) terms of stress defence.

Evaluation of seven function-known candidate genes for their effects on improving drought resistance of transgenic rice under field conditions.

Many stress responsive genes have been reported with an effect on improving stress resistance in model plants under greenhouse conditions. Towards identification of genes for drought resistance breeding, seven well documented genes (CBF3, SOS2, NCED2, NPK1, LOS5, ZAT10, and NHX1) in stress resistance were selected in this study and transformed into rice cultivar Zhonghua 11 under the control of constitutive promoter Actin1 and stress-inducible promoter of a rice HVA22 homolog, and transgenic rice were tested for drought resistance under field conditions. A total of 1598 independent transgenic T0 plants were generated.