Plant Mutation Breeding with Heavy Ion Irradiation at IMP

Xicun Dong,Xia Yan,Wenjian Li

doi:10.5539/jas.v8n5p34

Abstract

<p>The Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) is one of the ion-beam acceleration facilities intensively used at IMP, founded as national laboratory and opened for user in world from 1992. Since then, a lot of experiments irradiated by heavy ion beam have been carried out in the HIRFL, including plant mutation breeding. In this review, the biological effects induced by heavy ions and their corresponding mechanisms were reported from the point of view of cytological, morphological and molecular levels. To date, a large number of mutants were isolated using heavy ion irradiation IMP, such as early maturity, flower color and shape, high yield and disease resistant. In conclusion, heavy ion beam irradiation is an efficient mutagen and has significant phenotypic variations in plant. Our research will be further focused on transformation of scientific and technological achievements and mutagenic mechanism of heavy ion beam on high plant at the molecular level in the recent future.</p>

Highlights

Since Muller (1927) and Stadler (1928) discovered that X-rays can induce mutations in drosophila and barley, respectively, the use of ionizing radiation such as X-rays and gamma rays to induce variation has become an established technology (Ahloowalia & Maluszynski, 2001)
The basic research on plant mutation breeding is paid more attention to the biological effects induced by heavy ions and their corresponding mechanisms from the point of view of chromosomal aberrations, plant growth and mutated genes at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) (Table 1) (Chen et al, 2008; Dong et al, 2008; Hou et al, 2008, 2008; Li et al, 1996; Liu et al, 2006, 2012, 2014; Mei et al, 1994; Qian et al, 2007; Wang et al, 1992, 2012; Wang & Zhang, 2007; Wei et al, 2003; Xie et al, 1998; Zhang et al, 2008; Zhou et al, 2006)
At IMP, five mutants with transmittable phenotypes were roughly mapped based on the positional cloning technology in Arabidopsis thaliana (Du et al, 2014), which we discovered that mutants #164, #60 and #352 correspond to previously described genes, while mutants #197 and #357 correspond to genes that have not been reported before

Summary

Introduction

Since Muller (1927) and Stadler (1928) discovered that X-rays can induce mutations in drosophila and barley, respectively, the use of ionizing radiation such as X-rays and gamma rays to induce variation has become an established technology (Ahloowalia & Maluszynski, 2001). Ion beams have been applied as a nuclear technique since the late 1950s, especially in the field of surface modification on various materials (Cui & Luo, 1999). More and more researchers pay attention to the application of heavy ion beam irradiation in plant mutation breeding. The Institute of Modern Physics (IMP), affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was founded in 1957 in Lanzhou, China. It is an institute making important contributions to basic research as well as the applications of heavy-ion physics and nuclear techniques (Li, 2007; Wang, 2006). We introduce IMP accelerators facility and focus on the plant breeding research with heavy ions at the IMP accelerators

HIRFL—The Platform of Mutation Breeding Induced by Ion Beam at IMP

Some Typical Mutants from Plant Breeding with Heavy Ions at IMP

Findings

Conclusions and Perspectives