Abstract
In the present paper, the writers reported the change of free amino acid content in rice plants which were cultured in nutrient solution containing following sources of nitrogen: aspartic acid, cystine, glutamic acid, glycine, and (NH4)2SO4 as a control. As shown in Table 3, the content of free amino acid in the rice plants cultured with amino acid surpassed that of the control, and the greatest amount of free amino acid was found in the plants cultured with aspartic acid. Thus the plants may be arranged in the following decreasing order of amino acid content: plants cultured with aspartic acid>glutamic acid >glycine>cystine>(NH4)2SO4 (control).
Similar to the results reported in the previous paper, the infection of the causal fungus to the rice plants resulted the decreased of the free amino acid content in leaves, especially of the dibasic amino acid when measured 6 days after the inoculation.
There was no significant difference between the plants cultured with amino acid and the control with respect to the number of spots that appeared after inoculation. However, a correlation was found between the amino acid content in leaves and the length of spots which was measured under a magnifying glass (×20). The mean length of spots became shorter with the same descending order as the amino acid content of the leaves does. Accordingly, within the limits of our observations, it may be concluded that the more the content of dibasic amino acids is provided to the plants, the more the spotted area is apt to elongate, and that there exists some correlation between the susceptibility of rice plants to Helminthosporium blight and their amino acid content.