Amplification of partial rice florigen from Malaysian upland rice cultivar hitam and wai

Abstract

Rice is one of the global sources of food where it is grown in almost 148 million hectares annually with about 11% of the world planted land. Wetland rice is commonly grown and required extra land for good irrigation system. To compensate for land scarcity, upland rice which requires less water consumption is one alternative. Regardless of wetland or upland, rice is still being planted once a year all over the world although it could be harvested faster during short day condition. To meet global rice demand, there is a need to understand the effect of photoperiod on rice florigen and flowering to produce better yield. The aim of the study was to amplify rice florigen from Malaysian upland rice to improve its potential by amplifying Hd3a and RFT1 genes. Following amplification and verification via sequencing, cloning of the purified PCR product and construction of phylogenetic tree was carried out. Malaysian upland rice is grown in long day condition hence only partial RFT1 gene was successfully isolated. The partial gene sequence was aligned with 10 other RFT1 gene belonging to Indica and Japonica varieties and showed that Malaysian upland rice cultivars Hitam and Wai evolved from Japponica cultivars. Findings from this study suggested high similarity of RFT1 gene between various cultivars and further research on this gene is hoped to provide better understanding of flowering time of Malaysian upland rice for crop improvement.