Physical Mutagenesis of the Bioenergy Species Arundo donax L

Arundo donax L. (giant reed) is a perennial C3 Poaceae species of emerging interest for bioenergy and phytoremediation exploitation. Recent investigations highlighted its high efficiency as to carbon accumulation and biomass production in the Mediterranean environment (>40 t of dry matter/ha/year), and for second generation bioethanol production. A. donax completely lacks sexual reproduction and only propagates vegetatively through rhizomes. As a consequence, very little genetic variation is found between naturally occurring ecotypes, as confirmed by some recent molecular marker-based fingerprint analyses, precluding any possibility to implement breeding program based on selection. In order to increase genetic variability, one possibility is to use physical mutagenesis of vegetative tissues, but the large, complex, and highly polyploidy nature of the A. donax genome hampers the efficiency and the phenotypic effects of the mutant treatment. To our knowledge, these are the first results of the application of gamma-ray mutagenesis to A. donax. Mutagenized plant material consisted of in-vitro propagated meristematic tissue. Doses of gamma-ray (60Co) ranged from 10 to 100 Gy. Tissue browning index and survival rate were periodically recorded for each Petri dish (20 calli/dish). Treatments were replicated six times. Preliminary observations indicated that, with the protocols and plant materials tested, the LD50 was reached with irradiation doses between 40 and 60 Gy, which could be utilized for a large scale program of A. donax mutagenesis. The nature of induced mutations remains to be investigated. Project funded by the FP7 EU program WATBIO

Physical mutagenesis of the bioenergy species Arundo donax L.

Arundo donax L. (giant reed) is a perennial C3 Poaceae species of emerging interest for bioenergy and phytoremediation exploitation (Fig. 1). Recent investigations highlighted its high efficiency as to carbon accumulation and biomass production (>40 t of dry matter ha-1 year-1; Angelini et al. 2008), and for second generation bioethanol production. A. donax completely lacks sexual reproduction and only propagates vegetatively. As a consequence, very little genetic variation is found between naturally occurring ecotypes, precluding any possibility to implement breeding program based on selection (Mariani et al. 2010, Hardion et al. 2012)