摘要

Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (syn. Thuja orientalis L.), Thuja occidentalis L., and T. plicata D. Don, are conifers often used in the landscape. Most of the available cultivars of these species share the character of having foliage that turns an off-color during winter as a result of photoinhibition. Tetraploids of the related japanese-cedar [Cryptomeria japonica (L. f.) D. Don.] have exhibited greener color retention than diploids during winter and a recent report described a simple technique to double its chromosomes. The technique used to double the chromosome number of C. japonica was applied to the three species mentioned to determine if it would be effective for inducing polyploidy and, if so, optimal duration of treatment. Seedlings were treated at the cotyledon stage for 0 (control), 10, 20, or 30 days with an aqueous solution containing 150 mu M oryzalin + 0.1% Tween (R) 20 using a standard household spray bottle that created a fine mist. No tetraploids were observed for any species in control treatments, indicating all recovered tetraploids resulted from applying oryzalin. Tetraploids were observed for all other treatments except T. plicata at 30 days. Efficacy ranged from 0% to 27.1% of transplanted seedlings being tetraploid. There was a quadratic relationship between duration of treatment and percent tetraploids in T. occidentalis and T. plicata and a linear relationship for P. orientalis. Based on regression analysis, the optimal duration of treatment was 20.5 days for T. occidentalis and 13.9 days for T. plicata. The highest percent tetraploids recovered for P. orientalis was at 30 days and it is unclear if increasing duration beyond this would continue increasing percent tetraploids recovered. Morphology was not useful in early identification of tetraploids for any species.

  • 出版日期2012-6