REVIEW article
Front. Plant Physiol.
Sec. Molecular and Cellular Biology
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphgy.2025.1665196
This article is part of the Research TopicHormonal and Metabolic Interaction in Plant Development and Stress ManagementView all articles
DIG DEEPER IN A CHANGING WORLD– INSIGHTS INTO THE GENETIC, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND CLIMATIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE DEEP ROOT ARCHITECTURE OF RICE PLANTS
Provisionally accepted
- Royal Global University, Guwahati, India
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a basic staple crop, sustaining nearly half of the global population and underpinning the livelihoods of millions. As climate change exacerbates the frequency of drought, salinity, and nutrient limitations, optimizing rice root system architecture (RSA)—particularly deep root systems—has become essential for ensuring productivity and resilience. Deep RSA, characterized by steeper root growth angles and extensive large lateral roots, enhances access to water and nutrients in deeper soil layers, improving drought tolerance, nutrient use efficiency, and yield stability under environmental stress. This review synthesizes advances in understanding the physiological, genetic, and hormonal regulation of deep root development in rice. Key genes, including DEEPER ROOTING 1 (DRO1), qSOR1, and SOR1, regulate root growth angle and depth, while aquaporins and hormonal pathways (auxin, cytokinin, ethylene, abscisic acid, gibberellin) modulate root dynamics and water transport. The plasticity of RSA allows rice to adapt to diverse environments, with deeper roots conferring resilience to drought and nutrient deficiency, and shallower roots offering advantages in saline soils. Advances in marker-assisted selection, genome editing (CRISPR-Cas9), and RNA-based technologies enable precise manipulation of root traits, accelerating the development of climate-resilient rice varieties. Agronomic practices such as deep fertilizer placement further promote rooting depth and resource use efficiency. Additionally, deep RSA offers potential as a sustainable carbon sink, contributing to climate change mitigation. By leveraging these innovations, deep root systems can enhance rice crop resilience and support sustainable agriculture, ensuring global food security in a changing climate.
Keywords: Deep root architecture, drought tolerance, nutrient use efficiency, Root growth angle, DEEPER ROOTING1 (DRO1), Carbon Sequestration
Received: 13 Jul 2025; Accepted: 31 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tiwary, Chettri, Hasnu and Borah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pratikshya Borah, Royal Global University, Guwahati, India
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.