Survey the effect of X-ray irradiation dose on the germinating ability of petunia's seed

Abstract

Petunia is an immigrant flower with various colors. However, Petunia seed has a low germination rate. Thus, the stimulation of the germination plays an important role to increase the yield and this would bring economic efficiency. Many traditional methods have been used to increase the germination such as selecting the optimal conditions of the medium such as temperature, pressure, humidity, or chemical treatment. Nowadays, the X-ray irradiation is used to the germinating stimulation and mutation studies. Some advantages of using a X-ray generator as the source irradiation are easily changing the emitted energy, the dose and dose rate as well as when not in use it is not neccesary to shield the the apparatus. In this study, a X-ray generator MBR-1618R-BE (Hitachi, Japan) was used with the emission energy of 160 keV and the irradiated dose would be changed from 1 Gy to 1500 Gy. Petunia seeds were obtained from flower seeds grown in natural conditions at Da Lat city. Petunia seed samples were irradiated at doses of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 Gy to evaluate the ability to stimulate the germination and as well as at the high doses of 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500 Gy to determine the LD50 value. The results showed that at the dose of 2 Gy, the germination rate reached more than 80% of the seeds, approximately 4 times higher than that of the control sample and the LD50 value was 126 Gy.