A preliminary investigation of cultivated and wild species of rice for tocopherol contents

Rice (Oryza sativa L.), which provides calories to more than half of the world’s population, has been considered as a source of vitamins, minerals, and proteins. The portion of nutrition quality of rice is determined by the content of tocopherols which exhibit an antioxidant effect. In this study, a total of 63 genotypes, including 35 wild accessions belonging to AA genome (O. glaberrima, O. barthii, O. rufipogon and O. meridionalis) and CC genome (O. officinalis), 9 Basmati and 19 non-basmati genotypes were analyzed for the total tocopherol content in brown rice. Wild rice accessions had considerably high total tocopherol content and it ranged from 9.7 mg/kg (O. rufipogon, IR105491) to 45.3 mg/kg (O. rufipogon CR100368). For the non-Basmati genotypes, it varied from 13.6 mg/kg (BPT5204) to 22.4 mg/kg (PR 128). Similarly, for Basmati cultivars, it ranged from 18.2 mg/kg (Basmati 370) to 25 mg/kg (Pusa Basmati 1509). The wild species that had high total tocopherol content could be used as donors to generate interspecific crosses which will ultimately lead to the development of nutritionally rich rice cultivars.