Effect of gamma-ray radiation on physiological, morphological characters and chromosome aberrations of minitubers in Solanum tuberosum L.

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the effects of gamma-ray radiation on the physiological, morphological characters and chromosome aberrations of minitubers.

Materials and methods: Minitubers of one potato cultivar, ‘Shepody’, were irradiated with 8 doses of gamma-rays (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 Gy [Gray]) to investigate the effects of radiation on emergence ability, plant height and root length, morphological variations, chromosome aberrations, M₁ (first generation mutants) tuber number and size of minituber plants.

Results: Compared with the non-irradiated controls, the whole period of emergence was prolonged by 10–15 days for minitubers treated with gamma-ray radiation, but low doses of radiation (10, 20 and 30 Gy) promoted the emergence percentage of minitubers. With an increase in radiation dose, the emergence percentage, plant height and root length of minituber plants were significantly inhibited at 40 and 50 Gy. No emergence occurred at 60 Gy and higher doses. After radiation, a series of morphological variations and chromosome aberrations appeared in minituber plants. Radiation with 20 Gy promoted tuber formation, and the average number and diameter of M₁ tubers per plant were significantly increased over the control by 71% and 34%, respectively.

Conclusion: Low doses of radiation (10–30 Gy) might be used as a valuable parameter to study the improvement of minitubers by gamma-ray radiation treatment.

Keywords:

• Gamma-rays
• radiation
• potato minitubers
• Solanum tuberosum

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-07-0214), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30960205), Gansu National Natural Science Foundation (0710RJZA095), Gansu Educational Science Foundation (0602-07), Gansu Province Program for Research and Exploitation of Agriculture Biotechnology (GNSW-2008-07), The National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2008AA10Z149).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.