ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi
PI: Dr A K Singh
Co PIs: Drs B Haritha, Dr S Gopalakrishnan
Development of Provitamin A enriched golden rice lines in the genetic background of Swarna: A significant contribution in terms of identifying the phenotypic abnormalities of R event derived golden rice in the background of mega rice variety Swarna has emerged from the studies of golden rice lines. Alteration of endogenous hormonal homeostasis due to disruption of the native rice gene, OsAux1 that codes for trans-membrane auxin transporter has been identified as the major reason behind the multiple phenotypic abnormalities of the lines homozygous for the transgene. The results were put forth before the golden rice network committee and accordingly the committee has taken the decision to withdraw the R-event and its derived lines and promote the lines developed using E-event, that was used initially as a backup event, as the donor.
Assessment of loss of β-carotene during storage under different storage conditions: The storage losses of β-carotene were estimated systematically under three different storage conditions viz. room temperature (RT), refrigerated storage at 4oC and vacuum packed condition. The samples were stored in the form of paddy, brown rice and polished rice. Under all the three conditions of storage, the exposure of the samples to the light was strictly avoided by wrapping the samples in aluminum foil and storing under dark condition. Out of the three storage conditions, the paddy stored at RT exhibited retention of only 25.02 % β-carotene and this was closely followed by brown rice (25 %) and polished rice (20.2 %) stored at RT (Figure). The vacuum packed samples exhibited a maximum retention of 90.3 % in the samples stored as paddy and 85.2 % when stored as brown rice. Even under vacuum storage, the polished rice recorded considerably higher degradation of 51.1 %. The samples stored at 4oC exhibited an intermediate level of degradation compared to those of RT and vacuum packed samples (Figure). Under 4oC storage, the polished rice recorded a maximum of 67 % loss followed by brown rice (64.7 %) and paddy (61.3 %).
