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Wijerathna P1,2,4, Sandamal S3,4, and Ratnasekera D1*
1Department of Agricultural Biology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, 81100, Sri Lanka
2CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-Resources and Ecology/Guangdong Key Laboratory of Marine Materia Medica, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China
3State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
4University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,100049, Beijing, China
Abstract
Exploring phenotypic plasticity and adaptive potential of natural populations of wild rice
is crucial because of the recent drastic climatic changes. The wild progenitors of cultivated rice
(O. rufipogon and O. nivara) provide an excellent natural system for investigating the processes
of phenotypic plasticity. We examine the responses of morphology and phenology of O. rufipogon and
O. nivara in their respective typical natural habitats throughout the life cycle in two distinct periods,
2016 and 2020. A three-year gap was maintained to visualize the variations of traits against the continued climatic
effects. Trait divergence between two years was tested using a t-test. Results revealed noticeable differences in the
morphological characteristics, including the highest plant height (159.92 ± 3.52 cm), flag leaf length
(21.15 ± 1.49 cm), flag leaf width (1.16 ± 0.06 cm), anther length (3.84 ± 0.06 mm), and awn length (4.10 ± 0.40 cm)
of O. nivara in 2020 due to high annual precipitation. O. rufipogon showed a stable response,
which inhabitant to deep water. Compared to 2016, O. nivara flowered earlier in 2020, but
O. rufipogon displayed a late flowering in 2020. These findings imply that phenotypic plasticity played
a significant role in environmental adaptability. These adaptive variations are crucial to adapt in climate change
and species divergence, offering new avenues for understanding vital genes for breeding climate resilient rice.
Keywords: climate change adaptation, flowering time, natural habitat, phenotypic plasticity and wild rice
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