Adaptive Diversity of Echinochloa Species to Osmotic Stress

Three Echinochloa species inhabit various crop fields with different soil moisture conditions. Therefore, a growthpouch test was conducted to investigate adaptive diversity of six Echinochloa species, three from Korea and three from USA, toosmotic stress by assessing shoot and root growths. Echinochloa crus-galli var. praticola showed the greatest tolerance to osmoticstress in both root ($GR_{50}=1316.3g\;PEG\;L^{-1}$) and shoot ($GR_{50}=212.2g\;PEG\;L^{-1}$) growths, while Korean E. oryzicola was mostsensitive to osmotic stress in both root ($GR_{50}=116g\;PEG\;L^{-1}$) and shoot ($GR_{50}=126.2g\;PEG\;L^{-1}$) growths. Root to shoot (R/S) ratioof Echinochloa crus-galli var. praticola increased with increasing osmotic stress, while that of Korean E. oryzicola decreased, suggestingthat R/S ratio is closely related to osmotic stress tolerance in Echinochloa species. Our results clearly demonstrate that E. crus-galli var.praticola maintains high R/S ratio even under high osmotic stress, which enables this species to well adapt to dry upland condition. Incontrast, while E. oryzicola fails to maintain sufficiently high R/S ratio, resulting in poor adaptability to dry upland condition.