Differentially regulated kinases and phosphatases in roots may contribute to inter-cultivar difference in rice salinity tolerance.

Rice is the second most important cereal crop in the world but its production suffers from saline environments in many areas since it is one of the most salt sensitive crops. However, the large divergence in tolerance between rice cultivars can be exploited to gain insights into mechanisms of salinity tolerance, for example by carrying out comparative transcriptomics studies. We recently showed that specific transporters in roots of the tolerant rice cultivar FL478 are differentially regulated compared to their counterparts in the more sensitive IR29 cultivar and that this may contribute to the observed lower Na(+) influx, reduced Na(+) translocation to the shoot, and lower Na(+):K(+) ratio observed in FL478. In this addendum we further evaluated some of the regulatory genes that are potentially important in the modulation of membrane transporters involved in rice cation homeostasis.