PROTEIN ALTERATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH SALINITY, DESICCATION, HIGH AND LOW TEMPERATURE STRESSES AND ABSCISIC ACID APPLICATION IN LAL NAKANDA, A DROUGHT-T OLERANT RICE CULTIVAR

Lal nakanda is a drought-tolerant rice cultivar. We have identified 95 steady-state high and Io tv molecular weight proteins which are up-accumulated(such as those with molecular weights of 102, 100, 87, 85, 55, 44, 43.5, 43, 41.7, 39, 36, 32, 31, 29, 26, 24, 23.8, 23, 21.5, 19, 18.2, 16.8 and 16.2 kDa in shoots and 100, 91, 87, 85, 81, 78, 63, 60, 52, 40.5, 31 and 26 kDa in roots) or down-accumulated (such as those with molecular weights of 81, 58 and 10.2 kDa in shoots and 24, 22.5, 19, 16, 15.5, 15.2, 14.2 and 13.8kDa in roots) in this rice cultivar when intact seedlings are subjected tosalinity (NaCl), air drying and high and low temperatures, several proteins (such as those with molecular weights of 100, 91, 87, 85 and 78 kDa) werefound to be co-regulated in response to the above stresses. On the other hand, proteins specific to a given type of stress (such as 15 and 13 kDa in response to salinity stress; 60 and 10 kDa in response to desiccation stress and 104, 93 and 76kDa in response to high temperature stress) were also noticed. Exogenous application of abscisic acid mimicked several of the protein perturbations caused by the imposition of stresses.