Abstract
Starch contents in the tissues of seed embryo, young seedlings, and adult plants were compared among cereal crops such as rice (A, B, C type, more than 25 varieties of Japanese type and several species of wild rice), wheat, barley, rye, oat, corn, sorghums, proso, barnyard millet and Italian millet. The following results were obtained: (1) Rice plants (including wild rice) always contain much and greater starch grains than the other crops in the parenchymatous tissues of matured culm internodes and leaf sheaths. Corn, sorghum, proso and millets were similar in their starch content in the embryo of seeds or in young seedlings, being feeded by the endosperm, although they contained much starch sometimes. However, in later the adult plants would have a little starch in the matured parenchyma. Wheat, barley, rye, and oat, on the other hand, scarcely contained starch in the embryo of seed and in the parenchyma of adult plant, except scutellum of germinating seeds, matured pollens, pericarp of ovary of the early maturing stage, endosperm cells and so-called statolith starches in root caps and the basal part of internodes and leaf sheaths. (2) Since the starch content in the matured tissues of rice plants is peculiarly abandunt and changes remarkably with the stage of growth and environmental factors, the brief estimation for starch content in the tissues by I-IK solution should be used to estimate the nutritional or physiological state of rice plant.
