Polyploidy and radiosensitivity

Abstract

Conger and Johnston have concluded, from studies of the effects of X-radiation in a flower bud of Tradescantia paludosa containing a mixed population of diploid and haploid microspores, that chromosomal radiosensitivity or sensitivity per unit length of chromosome is identical in haploid and diploid cells. The results of different workers in which radiation sensitivity of cells of polyploid plants has been found to be equal to, greater or less than comparable diploids have been attributed by them to intrinsic differences in species sensitivity rather than to the effect of polyploidy itself. In a comparative study of the frequency of chromosome aberrations induced by different types of radiations on diploid, tetraploid and hexaploid Triticum species, we observed that the results obtained varied with the type of radiation used.