Biological effects of argon ion beams on dry seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana

To study the biological effects of argon ion beams provided by Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC, Program No.13J404) in National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) on Arabidopsis thaliana, the postembryonic development of irradiated dry seeds, such as survival rate, root length, hypocotyls length, plant height and bolting rate, were investigated. The results showed that survival rate, root length, hypocotyls length, plant height and bolting rate decreased with the increasing doses. The variations of genomic DNA fingerprints of the irradiated samples were analyzed by using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. RAPD results demonstrated that the genetic similarity coefficient between the controls and treatment groups were 0.556-0.944. But the similarity coefficients among treatment groups irradiated with different dosages had no obvious correlations. All the results indicate that M1 seedlings of Arabidopsis thaliana irradiated by argon ions has obvious biological effects on both the plant developments and genomic DNA variations. (authors)