Environmental modulation of plant response to neutron irradiation

Increasing the Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Specificity of Mutation Induction in Flowering Plants

“…However, in highly controlled experiments (16) it was shown that the effectiveness of neutrons can be increased by oxygen in very dry barley seeds. These and other recent developments of the modification of neutron effects in plants by environmental factors have been reviewed by Smith (70).…”

“…There are a number of experimental results with flowering plants, however, which suggest that following mutagen treatments mutations of a given phenotype may occur preferentially (4,56,57,68,70). This type of mutagen specificity appears not to be due to direct interactions between specific genes and specific mutagens.…”

“…It may relate to mutagen-specific chromosome breaking properties at or near the loci in question or may be caused by differential lethal effects (sometimes called "diplontic selection") with the different mutagens. Smith (70,71) has summarized results of several experiments which demonstrate that products of irradiation can be preferentially recovered depending on environmental conditions during growth of irradiated tissue, e.g., seeds.…”