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Comparison of Brassicaceae species for phytotoxicity testing
Citation:
OLSZYK, D. M., E. LEE, T. G. PFLEEGER, M. Das, AND M. PLOCHER. Comparison of Brassicaceae species for phytotoxicity testing. Presented at Agronomy/Crop/Soil Science Annual Meeting, Houston, TX, October 05 - 09, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
We compared four Brassicaceae species for potential use as test species in the EPAs Series 850 vegetative vigor test and other phytotoxicity tests to determine effects of chemicals on non-target plants.
Description:
We compared four Brassicaceae species for potential use as test species in the EPAs Series 850 vegetative vigor test and other phytotoxicity tests to determine effects of chemicals on non-target plants. Arabidopsis thaliana var. Columbia is commonly used in plant molecular and physiological studies. Wisconsin Fast Plants® (Brassica rapa) have been developed as an educational tool to study plant physiology and genetics. Canola (B. napa ‘Westar’) is an important oil crop and broccoli (B. oleracea ‘Belstar’) is a common vegetable crop. All of these species also are rich sources of expressed sequence tags (EST) and genome survey sequences (GSS) available in public databases for possible molecular studies. Plants were treated with sulfometuron methyl and primisulfuron-methyl ~ 14 days after emergence (DAE) and measured for shoot dry weight ~ 28 DAE. Arabidopsis was the most sensitive to both herbicides. It had an Effective Concentration producing a 25% reduction in shoot dry weight (EC25) of 0.008 to 0.04 g a.i. (grams active ingredient) ha-1 for sulfometuron methyl and 0.12 g a.i. ha-1 for primisulfuron-methyl. The Brassica species had EC25 values of 0.04 to 0.82 g a.i. ha-1 for sulfometuron methyl and 0.2 to 2.4 g a.i. ha-1 for primisulfuron-methyl. B. rapa had a lower EC25 for seed production than the EC25 for shoot dry weight for plants treated with sulfometuron methyl. All four species may be useful for plant toxicity testing and for comparative environmental genomics utilizing herbicide specific transcripts markers already identified in Arabidopsis thaliana.