Expression data from field droughted rice plants

This study aims to provide a transcriptomics dataset for field grown rice plants subjected to mild drought concentrating on the two parents of a mapping population, Bala and Azucena. Plants were grown in 1.2 m2 plots under flooded conditions in Wuhan, China being sown on 2nd June 2007. Starting at 59 days after sowing, drought was imposed by withholding water, while a set of control plots had continued flooding conditions. The drought was imposed for 24 days during which time a small amount of water was added on 3 occasions to raise soil moisture to 30% by volume. After 24 days the second youngest fully expanded leaf was taken and gene expression analysis performed. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression underlying drought in rice plants with the aim of using the data to identify candidate genes for drought avoidance QTLs detected within the a rice mapping population. Two rice cultivars, Bala and Azucena, were grown in 1.2 m2 plots under flooded conditions in Wuhan, China being sown on 2nd June 2007. Starting at 59 days after sowing, drought was imposed by withholding water, while a set of control plots had continued flooding conditions. At 2 pm on the 83rd day after sowing (after 24 days of drought) the second youngest fully expanded leaf was taken off three plants in two plots per block, the leaves had the top and bottom 4 cm removed and the central portion of the leaf was placed in a bag and then into liquid N2. For the controls there was only one plot of the genotypes per block. There was one bag for each block and three replicate blocks. A total of 6 droughted leaf samples (3 Bala and 3 Azucena) and six control leaf samples (3 Bala and 3 Azucena) were collected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.