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Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (6): 59-69.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2024301

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Effects of space mutagenesis on the growth of alfalfa (Medicago sativa) seedlings under PEG-6000 simulated drought stress

Yan-xia ZENG(), Zhi-long CHEN, Ji-hong SHANG, Xiao-di SHA, Juan WU, Cai-jin CHEN()   

  1. Guyuan Branch of Ningxia Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences,Guyuan 756000,China
  • Received:2024-07-31 Revised:2024-09-20 Online:2025-06-20 Published:2025-04-03
  • Contact: Cai-jin CHEN

Abstract:

The aim of this work was to explore the effects of space mutagenesis on the growth of alfalfa (Medicago sativa) seedlings under simulated drought stress. An experiment was conducted in which 14 mutated and 14 non-mutated alfalfa materials were treated with polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG-6000) to impose drought stress or with distilled water as the control. Growth-related indexes were measured for all the plant materials, and the membership function method was used for multivariate data evaluation. The results showed that the plant height, base stem diameter, root length, fresh weight per plant, leaf area, leaf circumference, leaf length, and leaf width of most materials was lower under drought stress than in the control, whereas the SPAD value was higher in the drought-stressed plants than in the control plants. Compared with the non-mutated materials, the most mutated materials showed lower levels of inhibition under drought stress, and higher SPAD values. With the exception of plant height, the growth indexes of mutated Juneng 7 were significantly higher than those of its non-mutated counterpart (P<0.05). In addition, the base stem diameter and leaf length of mutated WL354, the leaf area, leaf circumference, leaf length, and SPAD value of mutated DS310FY, the leaf area, leaf width, and SPAD value of mutated Yanbao, the leaf area, leaf length, leaf width, and SPAD value of mutated WL343, the leaf length and SPAD value of mutated Gannong No.3, the leaf width of mutated Huangguan, and the SPAD value of mutated Zhongmu No.1, Nanmu 501, and Adina were all significantly higher than those of their respective non-mutated counterparts (P<0.05). The base stem diameter of Adina, fresh weight per plant of Gannong No.6, leaf area, leaf circumference, leaf length of Gannong No.4, and leaf width and SPAD value of WL354 were significantly higher than those of their respective mutated counterparts (P<0.05). We conducted a membership function analysis based on the growth indexes of the materials at the seedling stage under drought stress, and obtained a comprehensive score for each material. The average scores of eight mutated materials (Gannong No.3, DS310FY, Juneng 7, Nanmu 501, Huangguan, Yanbao, WL343 and Adina) were higher than those of their non-mutated counterparts. These results indicate that the drought resistance of these eight materials was improved by space mutagenesis.

Key words: space mutagenesis, PEG-6000, drought stress, alfalfa, seedling stage, growth