Determining Genotoxic Effects Of Dicamba On Allium cepa using Comet Test in Tissue Culture

3rd International Conference on Engineering Technology and Applied Sciences (ICETAS), Skopje, Makedonya, 17 - 21 Temmuz 2018, ss.19

Dicamba (3,6-dichloro-2-methoxybenzoic acid) is a benzoic acid derivative synthetic auxin that is

used in plant cell and tissue culture. It is generally applied as herbicide to kill perennial plants. There

are negative effects of plant growth regulators on environment due to their careless use, however,

very few studies report their negative effects on genetic material. It is possible to determine

genotoxicity using different test systems that measure damages to genetic material. Allium cepa is

used as a model plant in performing these tests including comet assay. This study investigated

possible genotoxic effects of dicamba on Allium cepa root meristems. Hence, bulbs were rooted on

agar solidified MS medium for 5 days. Thereafter, the bulbs were transferred to Murashige and

Skoog (MS) medium (control) or MS medium containing 0.67, 1.34, 2.01, 2.68, 3.35, 4.02 and 8.04

mg/L dicamba for 24 hours. All concentrations of dicamba had significant damaging effects on roots

that measured as comet tail intensity and tail moment compared to the control group. Almost all

concentrations of dicamba showed damaging effects on DNA.

Keywords: Dicamba, Allium Cepa, Comet Assay, Tissue Culture