A Comparative Study on Mutagenic Effects of Space Flight and Irradiation of γ-rays on Rice

The experiment was conducted to study the mutagenic effects of space environment on seedling growth in M1 generation and plant height and heading date in M2 generation in rice. Two types of lines of growth promotion (GP) and growth suppression (GS) were selected from the recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a cross between a sensitive japonica Lemont and a nonsensitive indica Teqing to compare the mutation frequency and mutagenic efficiency for plant height and heading date in the M2 generation. Space environment resulted in 34.9% higher seedling height (SH) in the GP group than in the control, and 39.1% lower in the GS group than in the control, and there was no difference in seed fertility (SF) between the two groups. In M2, mutants of plant height and heading date can be induced by space treatment in both the two groups with lower mutation frequency and mutagenic efficiency in the GP group than in the GS group. There were no significant differences in the physiological damages in M1 between the two groups after γ-rays irradiation treatment. Mutation frequency and mutagenic efficiency of heading date in M2 were higher in the GS group than in the GP group, and the opposite was true for mutagenic efficiency of plant height although the mutation frequency varied between the two groups. The mutation frequencies of plant height and heading date induced by space environment were obviously lower than those by γ-rays irradiation, but the mutagenic efficiency was the opposite for most of the traits. For the GP and GS of seedlings induced by space environment, the GS had higher mutation frequency and mutagenic efficiency for plant height and heading date than the GP in M2.