Chemical Stress Response of Wild Oat to 1, 2, 7, 8-Diepoxyoctane Treatment

This work aimed for positive genetic or physiological alteration in the quantitative traits of oat species specifically and other cereals in general in a way that may reflect human benefits in terms of increasing crop yield for both human and livestocks consumption. The results indicated that the treatment of both diploid oat species (Avena clauda and A. eriantha) with 100 μ_l of the chemical mutagen 1,2,7,8-Diepoxyoctane (DEO) as compared with the 200 μ_l and the untreated ones (control) had resulted in an increased final plant height (82-104 cm as compared with 70-9 cm for the treated with 200 μ_l and 12-48 cm for the untreated plants of A.clauda and A. eriantha respectively). Also, the former treatment had lead to an increase in; leaf number (18-16 respectively as compared to 15-2 in the 200 μ_l treatment and 4-14 in the untreated). Furthermore, the 100 μ_l treatment had induced the germination of fertile node tillers (2-3) and apical tillers (6-9) which had increased the spikelets number between 16-26 within the node and apical tillers for A. clauda and between 4-5 for A. eriantha compared to 1-6 in the other treatments which is related to the complete absence of node tillers and to the presence of just single apical panicle in the other treatments. The presence of several fertile apical and node tillers in the diploid species as a result of treatment with 100 μ_l DEO had reflected 4-5 folds increase in plant productivity in terms of increasing leaf number and seed density. These results may suggest that such tillers had arised as a result of physiological and/or chemical stress responses to DEO treatment rather than to genetic effects, Since the F2 progeny which is resulted from DEO-untreated F1 had shown no tillers as compared to the re-treated ones. These findings may suggest that the re- application of the 100 μ_l DEO treatment on cultivated oats as well as other cereals may be beneficial in terms of increasing productivity and this requires further studies on such plants.