Drought responsive transcriptome profiling in roots of contrasting rice genotypes IR20 and Nootripathu

Drought avoidance mechanism is one of the component mechanisms contributing for drought tolerance in which roots serves as the master keys, but poorly understood. Comparative analysis of drought stress responsive root transcriptome between drought-tolerant Nootripathu and drought-susceptible IR20 In this study, we used microarrays to dissect out drought responsive changes in roots of two contrasting rice genotypes viz., IR 20 (a shallow rooted lowland indica genotype) and Nootripathu (a deep rooted upland indica genotype) at molecular level. Plants of two contrasting genotypes i.e. IR20 and Nootripathu were grown in 1m long PVC pipes and subjected to gradual drought stress. Root samples were collected from control and drought stressed plants for RNA extraction and used for hybridization on 52K Affymetrix rice genome expression arrays.