Abstract

Studies were planned to assess the detrimental effect of Cd induced stress on morphological growth and yield attributes of rice plant. Therefore, this experiment was conducted during 2019 at Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India. The focusable part of the study were based upon the morphological and yield attributing characters like plant height, leaves numbers, total number of tillers and productive tillers, length of panicle, numbers of spikelets/ panicle, weight of spikelets/ panicle and test weight. Reduction in all the parameters were recorded as the externally imposed CdCl2 concentrations increased gradually from 100 to 300 ppm. Growth inhibition due to cadmium induced stress also expressed in terms of per cent reduction among the treatments and found that maximum reduction of plant height and number of leaves recorded at 30 days after sowing (DAS) was 28.39 and 44.53%, while the reduction in total number of tillers was 46.34% at 60 DAS. However, per cent reduction in length of panicle, number of spikelets/panicle and test weight were 25.1, 36.6, 4.68 and 18.06 %, respectively at 120 DAS. The externally induced stress of CdCl2 made remarkable changes into the morphological features as well as yield attributes of rice plant results yield loss. While further studies are essential to know the efficiency of partitioning of CdCl2 into the different parts of plant because it is a carcinogenic/mutagenic compound.