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Research has been initiated in two new projects. Mr. A.R. (Abdul) Mohammed, a new TAMU Ph.D. student, will be working on one of these two areas. One seeks to unravel the physiology of the effects of excess night-time heat during the interval around flowering. The information will be used in cooperation with R. Tabien to establish a selection process for tolerance of this heat, which can cause dramatic losses in Texas rice in some years. In addition, the information will be used to seek preventive or remediative management treatments. At the same time, a study of the effect of the heat at a slightly later stage upon cereal quality will be initiated with the anticipated cooperation of other scientists at the Beaumont Center. The other new project seeks to identify management treatments, such as specific PGRs or selected nutrients, to increase seedling vigor in cool planting conditions. We would like to plant early to increase the amount of season left for the ratoon crop and to avoid main crop heat stress at flowering. Planting early, however, is associated with cool planting conditions. We will simultaneously develop a seedling screening procedure for respiration, which has been shown in another crop to be related to plant vigor expressed as grain number. The methods development will be done in cooperation with R. Tabien and S. Pinson. The screening procedure will then be used in cooperation with R. Tabien as one method to rapidly select for high grain potential. This study is sponsored by the Texas Rice Research Foundation. |