Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2015, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (1): 40-46.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1259.2015.00040

• EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Effect of Different Times of UV-B Radiation on Seedling Growth of Arabidopsis thaliana

Wen Han, Rong Han*   

  1. College of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen 041004, China
  • Received:2013-11-13 Accepted:2014-03-12 Online:2015-01-01 Published:2015-04-09
  • Contact: Han Rong
  • About author:

    ? These authors contributed equally to this paper

Abstract: We treated Columbia-0 wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings with enhanced UV-B radiation (16.67 μW·cm-2 radiant power) at 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and 3 h. We observed leaf morphological characters and detected root length, leaf chlorophyll content, soluble protein content, malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, catalase (CAT) activity and chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics. With a short period of UV-B radiation, roots were elongated and chlorophyll content and soluble protein content were increased in leaf, but prolonged UV-B radiation inhibited the elongated root length; caused decreased leaf chlorophyll content, soluble protein content and chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics such as Fv/Fm and qP; promoted MDA concentration; and increased SOD and CAT activity and qN over time. With 16.67 μW·cm-2 radiation, the optimal time of UV-B radiation was 1.5 h. If UV-B radiation acts as a kind of environmental stress, the extent of damage to the plant was restricted, and the plant would have to adapt to UV-B radiation to let the damage reach a minimum when the stress level reached the limitation.