Silicon bodies in leaves of rice were characterized by Scanning
Electron Microscopy and X-ray microanalysis. It was found that 
rice leaves contained 6 types of silicon bodies, namely, X-structure,
corn-seed shape, shark-saw nose shape, trichome, perforated plate,
and irregular shape. X-ray microanalysis of all shapes of silicon
bodies revealed that they all contained Si as the major element.
Extraction procedures through enzymatic and physical means were
employed to liberate silicon bodies from rice leaves. It was found 
that an optimum method was to, first, autoclaved rice leaves, 
followed by digestion with 5 % (w/v) cellulase, incubated at 37 °C
with continuous shaking at 120 r.p.m. for 5 days, then finished with
sonication for 1.5 hr. However, this method yielded polymer with 
high viscosity as a by-product. Together with the remnants of fibers
from rice leaves, made it impossible to filter out the silicon 
bodies,even though heat was also used. It was found also that
centrification affected the integrity of Silicon bodies.Conc. HNO3
and a mixture of conc. HNO3 : conc. HCl were used to extract silicon
bodies. It was found that the use of only conc. HNO3 yielded 
significantly higher amount of SiO2 than the use of the mixture of
acids (p<0.05). The amount of SiO2 extracted were 0.6114 ± 0.0364 
g / g dried wt. (mean ± S.D.)  and 0.4853 ± 0.0212 g / g dried wt.
(mean ± S.D.), respectively. Extractions of silicon bodies by heating
rice leaves in furnace using different parameters were attempted.
It was found that all methods yielded significantly different amount 
of silicon bodies (p<0.05). The method that liberated silicon bodies
the most is heating at 700° C. The amount of SiO2 obtained was
0.6334 ± 0.0468 g / g dried wt. (mean ± S.D.). However, that was
no statistically significantly significant difference between the 
use of acid and heating (p>0.05).Factors inducing precipitation 
of silicon in vitro were extracted from two-month-old rice leaves.
The inducing factors were able to precipitate silicon in vitro in
the from of hexagon-column bodies. SEM-EDS analysis 
of the pecipitates revealed that it contained Si to Na at 1 : 1.