The chemical nature of silicon in rice plant

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Abstract
Plants are often divided into several groups according to their characteristics appearing in mineral composition. Some plants selectively accumulate silicon and are described as “Silicicolus Plants”, while some selectively accumulate calcium and are described as “Calcicolus Plants”. Gramineae is the best known group belonging to silicicolus plants. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that rice plant absorbs much silicon from the growing medium as compared with other gramineae crops such as wheat, barley and grasses, and therefore it is considered to be one of the typical silicicolus plants. IMAIZUMI AND YOSHIDA (1) showed that silica (Si02) content of rice plants grown on paddy fields in Japan ranges from 5 to 20% at harvest, depending on silicon-supplying power of soils. Making use of water culture technique, however, it is possible to lower the silica content of rice plant to about 0.1%. According to the present authors' experiment (2), at least during the vegetative growth stage, any considerable decrease in the growth of rice plant has never been observed due to the lack of silicon in the growing medium. In spite of tremendous efforts by many plant physiologists, the role of silicon in plant life has not been fully established with the exception of the fact that silicon is one factor and sometimes the most important one constituting the resistant nature of plants to diseases and insects. The reason for unknown role of silicon in physiological process may mainly be attributed to the extreme difficulties in silicon-free culture technique. Taking this fully into consideration, the study on chemical nature of silicon compounds found in plants seems to be an effective approach to the study on the role of silicon in plants.

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