Relationship between grain filling duration and leaf senescence of temperate rice under high temperature

High temperature during grain filling period has been reported to decrease the grain filling duration, leading to the lower grain weight and yield of rice. Two experiments in the phytotron and field were carried out to test the hypothesis that the leaf senescence of rice plants may determine the grain filling duration under high temperature. In the phytotron experiment in 2008, rice plants of a japonica cultivar “Ilpumbyeo” were subjected to three minimum/maximum (mean) temperature regimes of 11/19 (15), 17/25 (21), and 23/31 °C (27 °C). In the field experiment, rice seedlings of the same rice cultivar were transplanted on May 6th and June 19th in 2009 and the mean temperatures during the grain filling period were 24.4 and 21.9 °C, respectively. Both experiments revealed consistently that high temperature increased the rates of grain filling and leaf senescence while it reduced the durations of them. However, grain filling was terminated earlier than complete leaf senescence, the time gap being greater at higher temperature. In addition, the fraction of dry matter partitioning to the leaf sheath + culm resumed to increase following the termination of grain filling under high temperature, indicating that leaves were still maintaining photosynthetic capacity and supplying assimilates into the other plant tissues except grain even after the termination of grain filling. These findings suggest that an early termination of grain filling in temperate rice under high temperature was not resulted from the lack of assimilate owing to the early leaf senescence but from the loss of sink activity owing to the earlier senescence of panicle.