Vol. 10, Special Issue 11 (2021)

Author(s):
Annie Sharon, Rishima Maheendran, Soundarrajan Vadivel, Anurabh Chakravarthy, Elakkiya Venkatesan, Geethalakshmi Vellingiri, Gnanam Ramasamy, Manikanda Boopathi Narayanan and Meenakshisundaram Palaniappan

Abstract:
Heat stress is one of the most detrimental abiotic stresses to crop plants and causes considerable damage to the cell membrane, affects processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and many more. An increase in temperature beyond the optimum could result in reduction in the enzymatic efficiency thereby affecting various processes catalysed by them. Normal functioning of enzymes is very much essential to maintain cellular homeostasis. Invertase is one such enzyme which plays a crucial role in maintaining cellular homeostasis. Invertase catalyses the conversion of sucrose into glucose and fructose, which serves as fuel for respiration in plants. In the present study (based on the cues obtained from RNA Seq analysis of the rice varieties, CO51 and N22) we assayed the invertase activity in six (6) different rice varieties, in control as well as high temperature stress treatment conditions to understand the effect of high temperature on plant invertases. The results of the assay revealed that, an application of heat stress brings about a significant difference in invertase activity in all the tested genotypes. In all varieties, except MDU6 there was a significant increase in invertase activity after heat stress. N22 a globally accepted heat tolerant variety and Anna (R) 4, a drought tolerant variety exhibited high invertase activity both in control as well as heat stress conditions with a moderate increase after heat stress. Assaying invertase activity could be used as a tool for evaluating rice genotypes with heat and drought tolerance.