The increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration adversely affect several quality traits of rice grains, but the biochemical mechanism remains unclear. The objectives of this study were to determine how changes in the source-sink relationship affected rice quality. Source-sink manipulation was achieved by free-air CO₂ enrichment from tillering to maturity and partial removal of spikelet at anthesis using a japonica rice cultivar Wuyunjing 23. Enrichment with CO₂ decreased the head rice percentage and protein concentration of milled rice, but increased the grain chalkiness. In contrast, spikelet removal resulted in a dramatic increase in the head rice percentage and protein concentration, and much less grain chalkiness. Neither CO₂ enrichment nor spikelet removal affected the starch content, but the distribution of starch granule size showed distinct treatment effects. On average, spikelet removal decreased the percentage of starch granules of diameter >10 and 5–10 μm by 23.6 and 5.6%, respectively, and increased those with a diameter of 2–5 and <2 μm by 4.6 and 3.3%, respectively. In contrast, CO₂ elevation showed an opposite response: increasing the proportion of large starch granules (>5 μm) and decreasing that of <5 μm. The starch pasting properties were affected by spikelet removal much more than by CO₂ elevation. These results indicated that the protein concentration and starch granule size played a role in chalkiness formation under these experimental conditions.

Hybrid indica rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars play an important role in rice production system due to its heterosis, resistance to environmental stress, large panicle, and high yield potential. However, no attention has been given to its root growth dynamic responses to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) in conjunction with nitrogen (N) availability. Free air CO2 enrichment (FACE) and N have significant effects on rice root growth. In this experiment, a hybrid cultivar Shanyou 63 (Oryza sativa L.) was used to study the effects of FACE and N levels on roots growth of rice. The results showed a significant increase in both adventitious root volume (ARV) and adventitious root dry weight (ARD) under the FACE treatment. The application of nitrogen also increased ARV and ARD, but the increase was smaller than that under FACE treatment. On the basis of the FACE experiment, numerical models for rice adventitious root volume and dry weight were built with the time as the driving factor. The models illustrated the dynamic development of rice adventitious root volume and dry weight after transplanting, regulated either by the influence factor of atmospheric [CO2] or by N application. The models were successfully used to predict ARV and ARD under FACE treatment in a different year with the predicted data being closely related to the actual experimental data. The model had guiding significance to growth regulation of rice root under the condition of atmospheric [CO2] rising in the future.