The effect of rice flag leaves’ width on the elements of the conducting system and a number of spikelets in panicles

Abstract

Rice is an important agricultural crop, providing food for over 4 billion people. It is necessary to increase its productivity. It is known that a leaf area index and a flag width during rice flowering are important factors in determining panicle productivity. The current paper has presented data from a study of the flag leaves’ conducting system of rice grown in the field at the EF “Proletarskoye” in the Rostov Region. The objects of the study were 47 rice samples from the FSBSI “ARC “Donskoy”, which varied in leaf length and width, and panicle characteristics. The purpose of the current study was to estimate the effect of rice flag leaf size and its conducting system on panicle seed production. Biometric analysis of rice samples and varieties has revealed significant differences in the size of morphological and anatomical traits of panicles and flag leaves. There have been found positive correlations between a leaf width, a number of conducting bundles (0.75±0.10), total area of all bundles (0.70±0.11), and a number of spikelets per panicle (0.49±0.13). A flag leaf widening by 1cm has resulted in increase in the number of spikelets per panicle by 66.3, the number of bundles by 22.1, and the area of all leaf bundles by 137,821 µm2 . When studying the conducting system of plant leaves (a number and area of bundles), there has been found that plants with narrow leaves (0.8–1.3 cm) had an average of 45.6 conducting bundles, which is significantly fewer than broad-leaved (2.0–2.5 cm) samples (74.1 bundles). Therefore, a rice flag leaf width is a marker trait for selecting panicles with high grain density and is recommended for use in breeding work.