The ecogenotoxic plant biomonitoring of a long-term polluted area in central Slovakia

Abstract

The aim of the study was to analyze, update, and complete the results of research in the field of in situ phytoindication of environmental genotoxicity near the aluminum plant in Žiar nad Hronom in central Slovakia. The authors focused on two methodologies: pollen abortivity assay of native flora and Trad-MCN assay. Comparison of changes in responses of living systems to changes in precipitation was conducted, and it suggests that there is an existence of an impact from a dilution effect to the plants. Also, the gradual increase of pollen abortivity in the 1990s and its decrease from 2009 were observed in a majority of species of wild flora. On an annual basis, abortivity has declined, although it has risen up slightly within each season. Despite a gradual decrease in the micronucleus frequency, the study area is still influenced by the ecogenotoxic factors. Pollen analysis of native flora and introduced Tradescantia plants indicates the long-time presence of ecogenotoxicity in this region due to the presence of aluminum plant.

Phytoindication of environmental mutagenesis in the in-situ conditions using the pollen of selected species of native flora

“…The advantage of this material is its high sensitivity, which is conditioned by the haploid state, and the quantity required for the corresponding statistical analysis of the results. The use of microspores and pollen makes it possible to effectively detect parallel damage at all three structural levels of the genetic apparatus of the cell; the impact of short-term and long-term exposure; impacts of an acute and persistent environmental load as well as adaptation mechanisms, individual and population response in different types of environmental load (Mičieta & Murín 1996Solenská et al 2006;Mišík et al 2009;Pogányová et al 2017Pogányová et al , 2019.…”

“…Many studies have developed numerous methods for the detection of mutagenicity and genotoxicity in "in vivo" conditions based on the accepted plant tests in WHO / IPCS, which are currently commonly used in the Arabidopsis thaliana, Allium / Vicia chromosome aberration test, Tradescantia stamen hair mutation and micronucleus analysis, Sister chromatid exchange, Fluorescent in situ hybridization, Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL assay), Singlecell gel electrophoresis (comet assay), Random amplified polymorphic DNA polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR) technique, Real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique, Flow cytometry (cf. Aksoy 2017) The use of plants as models for tests of environmental ecotoxicity and ecogenotoxicity was reported by, e.g., Paradiž & Lovka (1999), Pogányová et al (2017Pogányová et al ( , 2019, Mičieta & Murín (2018).…”