DROUGHT-TOLERANT OSCIPK GENES IN LOCAL AROMATIC RICE CULTIVARS

The promising study transpired in the laboratory of the Department of Field Crops, College of Agriculture, University of Karbala, Karbala, Iraq. The six aromatic local rice cultivars, i.e., V1: Ebaa1, V2: Baraka, V3: Furat, V4: Diggla, V5: Yasmine, and V6: Amber-33, served as materials in the presented study. Ten genes of the CIPK family were indicators for drought-tolerant genes. Detecting these genes from the leaves after exposure to drought stress used the Real Time device PCR after RNA extraction and converted to cDNA. The results revealed that the aromatic rice cultivar Amber-33 contained almost all the genes except the gene, OsCIPK04. Cultivars Furat and Diggla were also superior for gene detection. The genes OsCIPK06 and OsCIPK07 appeared in three rice cultivars (Diggla, Yasmine, and Amber-33). The three genes, i.e., OsCIPK08, OsCIPK09, and OsCIPK10, were absent in all the aromatic rice cultivars, while the OsCIPK05 gene appeared in all the studied rice cultivars under drought stress conditions. The technique used for detecting OsCIPK genes in the rice crop, matched with the results in the field experiments, resulted in the potential use of this method to screen the rice cultivars and determine their degree of drought tolerance.