Temperature-dependent Differences in Heading Response at Different Growth Stages of Rice

There is an increasing frequency in the occurrence of abnormal weather phenomena such as sharp increases and decreases in temperature. Under these weather conditions, the heading time of rice changes unexpectedly, which poses problems in agriculture. Therefore, we investigated the effect of temperature on the heading response at different growth stages in rice. During the period from transplanting to heading, the plants were subjected to different temperature treatments, each for a 9-day period, to observe the heading response. For the heading date analysis, “heading date” was defined as the number of days from transplanting to the appearance of the first spikelet. We found that the influence of temperature increased in the order of rooting stage, followed by meiosis, early tillering, spikelet differentiation, and panicle initiation stage in all ecological types and cultivars. In particular, unlike the results reported previously, the effect of temperature on heading during the photo-sensitive period was very small. Meanwhile, the influence of temperature on vegetative growth response at different growth stages was not consistent with heading response. These results can be used as basic data for predicting the variation in heading date owing to temperature variation at each growth stage. In addition, we propose that the concept of day length should be included in determining the influence of temperature on the photo-sensitive period.