Hello Teotia, 

For your research, you can grow rice hydroponically easily. You can use simple container based setting and available hydroponic solution therein, or even you can ask the hydroponic growing company for ready solutions. I have conducted several experiments on vegetables and ornamental crops and from my experience I can say, you should renew the culture solution frequently as rice plants may secrete allelochemicals/ root exudate and also to supply sufficient nutrition to the plants. You can go through my publications in RG for many paper on hydroponics growing of crops. You can also search through Internet, there are some articles studying rice in hydroponics. 

Regards, 

Hello Sachin,

Please see our publications made in IRRI. Its a root study methodology compilation book. Hope you will see some informations regarding your query. 

You can look at the following paper: "Rice endosperm iron biofortification by targeted and synergistic action of nicotianamine synthase and ferritin, Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2009 (7), p. 631-644, Wirth et al." The rice grew very well in the described nutrient solution. I also recommend germination on medium as described.

This paper has identified a mutant tolerance to water stress in hydroponic medium. This may help you for your study. http://aobpla.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/03/27/aobpla.plv023.abstract

 For checking root phenotype, is it must to grow rice plants hydroponically, I know for abiotic stress we do need to grow them hydroponically, is the same for root study too?

Irony of research is that, root growth in Hydroponics can never compliment the phenotype of field rooting. The phenotype recorded will be completely erroneous and will lead a false conclusion. Better perform in the studies in compacted peat of any physical material with inert nature supplemented with  treatment. For example to quote, as a reference to change, "Man on moon weigh 6 times lesser compared to Earth" due to gravity variation", Similarly, Any studies done in Hydroponics, 90% cases will not match the field phenotype. 

Thanks Vimarsh, then why should I do hydroponics? Can't we grow them in soil in pots as usual and then take out the plant with entire soil by inverting the pots and wash away the soil to study root phenotype. Hydroponics seem to have own set of problems, like: maintaining pH, correct nutrient formula and concentration, changing the nutrients in regular interval, root hypoxia and a few others. What is a good and easy way to study root phenotype in rice? Thanks!

Dear Sachin, Exactly said. If you can mimic your experiments matching to the field conditions, is far better than getting the easier roots growing in solutions. We @ www.aerobicrice.in have dug out roots of Rice and Maize for phenotypic screening. Though practical problems are huge, but we made it a great success. So i don't believe in concepts of hydroponics to prove anything that of roots which is hidden and unseen below ground. 

And gene based targeting of Abiotic stress are most often fail. Results will not be consistent for any gene based techniques experimented till now.  So, good identification of real time root phenotyping is the best remedy for Abiotic Stress. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWm35nBGJSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GCRoVNC02c

Dear Vimarsh, 

It is great to see you doing this technique, but we cannot do it here, cutting those pipes and all that. is too difficult at our place. I can only grow rice in pots (big buckets). But I think we can see the roots after 21 days as you have shown and once after they mature and die. But since the size of the pot is limited the roots will not be as long as in the field, isn't it? So mutant and wild type will form smaller roots than normal in the pots than in the field. Will it be good to use pots then, can we differentiate wild type and mutant roots in the pots? On the other hand I feel, even in hydroponics the roots will not be as long as in the field and hydroponics is not the real situation found in nature, so I wonder why people use it, these are land plants not water plants. So shall I just use the pots (we use big paint buckets without holes and water from top and we use top soil)? What shall I do?

Thanks,

Sachin

I think 21 days old seedlings should be enough. Where do you grow them before you transplant? Do you grow (starting from germination) in bucket full of mud-water?

Dear Sachin,

In Hydroponics, roots will not be longer as obvious, because, when there is no dearth of nutrients and water, why do roots has to waste its energy in making longer roots..!!! In field condition, Roots strive and achieve nutrient sufficiency with extended roots and bulk of root hairs.  Pots are better than root studies. The medium of treatment its self is changed from Solid to liquid, how can we expect a real phenotype. Its just that, we don't have any other easy alternative for making easier root studies making people rely on water based Hydroponics which will never even be nearer to results exhibited by field phenotype. Its depends on perception that can we do it or not. The persons in video are myself and my friends who are in Senior Research Cadre. We have made it possible to dig out roots from more than 80 genotypes with 3 replications. each pipes weighed more than 150-200 kgs, still we made it happen. As i can suggest, depend on real to field type phenotyping rather than working on easier steps of hydroponics, because, if you are aiming your research to become a field reality, hydroponics will never serve the purpose

Regards

Dr. Vimarsh

Liveon Biolabs Pvt. Ltd.

Head- AgroTech Division

www.liveonbiolabs.com

+91 9480849737

Thanks, I agree with you. My question again goes back to 21 days old seedlings. 

I think 21 days old seedlings should be enough. Where do you grow them before you transplant? Do you grow (starting from germination) in bucket full of mud-water?

Hello Sachin, If we need to do transplanting based study, for ex, Split root studies, we need a grown seedling that we grown in aerobic soil filled in smaller pipes with good moisture retention. Then we wash off the soil and transplant to main study pipes. for other studies, we do direct seeding or etiolated petri plate germinated 6 day old seedlings to pipes. We adopt the concept of Aerobic Growth, where there is no water stagnation in pots.