Developmental mutants showing abnormal organ differentiation in rice embryos

Zygotes of rice (Oryza sativa L. cv Taichung 65) were treated with 1.0 mM solution of the chemical mutagen N-methyl-N-nitrosourea. Out of 1420 M2 lines, 28 single-locus recessive mutants on embryogenesis were identified. Among them, we analyzed 11 mutants in the present study, which differentiated the shoot (plumule) and/or root (radicle) with abnormality. Of the 11 mutants, two showed no shoot differentiation with normal root. On the other hand, we could not detect any mutant which exhibited a normal shoot without a root. This suggests that shoot and root are genetically controlled by different loci and that the alleles associated with shoot formation mutate more frequently than do those of the root. Five mutants showed aberrant morphology of shoot when both the shoot and root developed. One of them, odm 5 (organ differententiation mutant 5) was germinable, but produced many fine and twisted leaves. This mutant was, however, lethal at the early post-germination stage under the usual cultural conditions. In another mutant (odm 4), shoot differentiation seemed to be initiated at an arbitrary position, resulting in a very abnormal morphology of the shoot when the position fronted the endosperm. The other two mutants showed abnormal morphology of both the shoot and root. One (odm 11) of the remaining two mutants showed a wide variation of abnormalities including no organ differentiation, either shoot or root differentiation and the development of both shoot and root with abnormalities. The last one (odm 16) was unique. It had an embryo with normal shoot and root but the embryo size was only one-third to one-half of normal embryos in length. Of course, the shoot and root are also small but viable. Therefore, odm 16 is considered to be a mutant in the size regulation of the embryo. Although an allelism test has not yet been done, most of these mutants are probably non-allelic, as the phenotypic abnormality differs largely with each one. In rice, the shoot and root highly differentiate in contrast to dicotyledonous embryo. Accordingly, these developmental mutants are very useful materials for investigating the regulatory mechanism of gene expression in organ differentiation.