1Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, Tamil Nadu, India
2Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, Tamil Nadu, India
3Department of Plant Biotechnology, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, Tamil Nadu, India
4Department of Physical Sciences and Information Technology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, Tamil Nadu, India
Chemical mutagenesis is one of the effective tools for the induction of variation in plants. The biological effect of the chemical mutagen on plant tissues is determined by the absorption dose which is calculated by the product of the concentration of the mutagen and the treatment duration. Standardizing the treatment conditions for the best possible mutagenesis is the first prerequisite in chemical mutagenesis.
Five concentrations of EMS (5 mM, 10 mM, 15 mM, 20 mM and 25 mM), three treatment durations (1 hr, 2 hr and 3 hr) and two pre-treatment conditions (soaking in water and non-soaking in water) were taken into consideration in the current study to examine the significance of each factor in regulating the mutation and to determine the unknown value of “Absorption dose” from the known survival rate.
The present study revealed that pretreatment with water affected the absorption of EMS into plant tissues and an increase in the EMS concentration and treatment duration decreased the survival rate of the cuttings. The study led to the inference that pretreatment of cuttings of
Absorption dose, EMS concentration, EMS treatment method, EMS treatment time, Pre-treatment
