Accretion of Anthocyanin in Rice Cultivars under Salinity Stress

High soil salinity is a major environmental stress in the world’s cultivated land that limits plant growth, metabolism and productivity of crop plants. Anthocyanins are water soluble pigments found in all plant tissues throughout the plant kingdom, derived from flavonoids via the shikimic acid pathway and are known to be inducible under stress. Anthocyanin can act as antioxidant by donating hydrogen to highly reactive radicals, thereby preventing further radical formation. The objective of this study was to determine effect of salinity on total anthocyanin content of five native rice cultivars collected from a traditional saline rice tract and two collected from a traditional non-saline rice tract of Kerala State of India. All the cultivars showed proportionate and significant increase in anthocyanin accumulation in relation to increase in salt stress. The variation was cultivar specific showing their differential response to stress.