Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

ELEVATED CO2 CONCENTRATION ENHANCES GERMINATION, SEEDLING GROWTH AND VIGOR OF RICE

A. Abzar, Mohd Nizam Mohd Said, Wan Juliana Wan Ahmad and Wan Mohtar Wan Yusoff, Febri Doni, F. Fathurrahman and Che Radziah Che Mohd Zain

Abstract

Rice is a staple food for more than 50% of world population. Asia produces and consumes about 90% of all Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are rapidly increasing in the atmosphere from 270 ppm to 384 in 2009 and then 401 ppm in 2016. Different studies show that increasing CO2 has a positive impact on rice by enhancing the photosynthetic rate while other claims that long-term CO2 can mediate adverse effect on rice. Different researches have been carried out on rice under elevated CO2. Most of those studies concerned physiology and yield. As the effect of elevated CO2 on seedling has not been studied yet, here we applied 800 ppm CO2 for 8 days and collected data. The results showed that elevated CO2 significantly increased rice seedling growth, germination rate, vigor and speed of germination which increased from 83% to 92%.