Environmental and genetic control of arsenic accumulation and speciation in rice grain: Comparing a range of common cultivars grown in contaminated sites across Bangladesh, China, and India

The concentration of arsenic (As) in rice grains has been identified as a risk to human health. The high proportion of inorganic species of As (As _i) is of particular concern as it is a nonthreshold, class 1 human carcinogen. To be able to breed rice with low grain As, an understanding of genetic variation and the effect of different environments on genetic variation is needed. In this study, 13 cultivars grown at two field sites each in Bangladesh, India, and China are evaluated for grain As. There was a significant site, genotype, and site by genotype interaction for total grain As. Correlations were observed only between sites in Bangladesh and India, not between countries or within the Chinese sites. For seven cultivars the As was speciated which revealed significant effects of site, genotype, and site by genotype interaction for percentage As_i. Breeding low grain As cultivars that will have consistently low grain As and low As_i, over multiple environments using traditional breeding approaches maybe difficult, although CT9993-5-10-1-M, Lemont, Azucena, and Te-qing in general had low grain As across the field sites.