II.10 Storage effect following treatment of barley seeds with ethyl methanesulfonate. I. Influence of seed moisture content.
T. Gichner and H. Gaul. Institute of Experimental Botany, Praha, Czechoslovakia and Abteilung f. Pflanzengenetik der Gesellschaft f. Strahlenforschung, Koln, DBR.
Barley seeds were treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) for 3 hr at 25°C. After the treatment, the seeds were washed with tap water for 24 hr at 25°C, redried at 40°C to different moisture contents, and stored at 25°C. The different seed moistures, attained by redrying, were maintained during storage in desiccators with different H20/H2S04 solutions.
The criteria used for expressing the effect of storage were chromosomal aberrations, M1 germination, M1 survival, M1 seed set, and the frequency of M2-chlorophyll mutants.
During the 1 to 6 seeks storage three types of response to the seed moisture level were observed:
1) Following storage of EMS-treated seeds with 30% moisture, the biological damage in the M1 generation as well as the M2chlorophyll mutation frequency decreased considerably, as compared with treatements without storage.
2) Following storage of EMS-treated seeds with 20 and 13% moisture, the biological damage in M1 generation increased considerably, so that, in the field experiments, no plants survived.
3) Following storage of EMS-treated seeds with 5% moisture, the biological damage in M1 generation and the M2-chlorophyll mutation frequency remained unchanged, as compared with treatments without storage.