Radiation-Induced Breeding in Camelina Sativa

Abstract

The ionizing radiation methods, including X-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons to create variation is well established and used in major crops. Many seed-propagated crops with homozygous parents such as barley, rice, and tomato are resilant to the higher level of damage to chromosomal DNA during mutation induction, followed by repair. In order to improve oil content and other agronomic traits, we treated Camelina sativa Crantz with diverse levels of gamma ray and neutron beam. Overall, 300 Gy of gamma ray and at 50 Gy of neutron beam treated C. sativa showed better agronomic traits. 400 Gy of gamma rays and 200 Gy of fast neutron treatments increased almost four times more oil content than non-treated seeds. In conclusion, our results provide a rapid and economical means to improve agronomic characters of camelina in breeding programs. This is undoubtedly highly valuable, pre-breeding material especially for high oil content.