Cold Stress Tolerance in Rice Plant : Screening of genotypes based on morphophysiological traits

Boro (winter rice), one of the most important rice crops, might suffer from critical low temperature at the different growth stages from germination to maturity.The critically low and high temperatures vary with the growth stages. The rice plant could normally grow between 20C and 35C and these critical temperatures vary with genotype, duration of critical temperature, diurnal changes and physiological status of the plant. Boro rice might suffer from low temperature at the reproductive stage of the crop. Even low temperature at the crop establishment and tiller development stage (vegetative phase) of the crop might affect the growth, development and ultimately the yield of the crop. The book thus was written on the basis of research findings which screened out genotypes with good phenotypic acceptability and good emergence index, genotypes having better tolerance to low or minimum temperature and discovered nature of tolerance of genotypes with respect to low or minimum temperature.