Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2018) 7(6): 2991-3001 2991 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2018.706.352 Nitrogen Stress Leads to Induce Change in Expression of Genes for Nitrate Transporter in Wheat Genotypes Chetan Kumar Nagar 1 , Gayatri 1 , Alka Bharati 1 , Subodh Kumar Sinha 1 , K. Venkatesh 2 and Pranab Kumar Mandal 1* 1 ICAR-National Research Center on Plant Biotechnology, Pusa Campus, New Delhi, India 2 ICAR-Indain Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, Karnal, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Nitrogen is one of the most critical limiting element for plant growth, primarily constituent of the nucleotides and proteins that make up the building blocks essential for life (Xu et al., 2012), therefore quantitatively most important nutrient and limiting factor for growth and development of plants (Kraiser et al., 2009). Inadequate nitrogen seriously affects yields of crops while excess has no significant effect on yield, but contributes N pollution by means of leaching, surface runoff, denitrification, and emission of greenhouse gas like nitrous oxide, etc. (Liao et al., 2012). Serious health hazards are of great concern due to intake of nitrate- contaminated water (Abrol et al., 1999). However, low recovery rate and high loss of fertilizer N would increase the cost of food production and the eutrophication of many natural aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (An et al., 2006). Rational application of N to avoid excessive fertilization together with use of cultivars which efficiently use N sources International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 06 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is very important for reducing the cost of production, sustainable agriculture and mitigates the environment pollution. It is more so in case of major cereals like wheat, where the NUE is approximately 40%. NUE comprises of N- uptake by the root and then their assimilation, utilization, remobilization by the shoot. However, utilization primarily dependent on available resources, i.e. amount of N-uptaken by the root system. Root system architecture (RSA) and the transporters are key factors which determine the amount of nitrogen forage could be possible by a genotypes at different level of soil nitrogen. Here in this study we are reporting N stress induced changes in gene expression of different high and low affinity nitrate transporters among eight diverse wheat genotypes with respect to NUE at seedling stage. This seems to be one of first reports of nitrate transporters gene expression under N-deprived condition in different NUE genotypes of wheat. Kharchia, showed minimum change in expression, whereas VL-401 and Kalyansona were distinctly different from the rest of the genotypes for LATS and Kharchia also showed its distinct character by significantly down regulating for HAT under N-stress condition. Keywords Wheat, NUE, N- uptake, LATS, HATS Accepted: 22 May 2018 Available Online: 10 June 2018 Article Info