Generating new chrysanthemum plant varieties using ion beams

Zaiton, A.*; Affrida, A. H.*; Shakinah, S.*; Nurul Hidayah, M.*; Nozawa, Shigeki*; Narumi, Issey*; Hase, Yoshihiro; Ono, Yutaka

Chrysanthemum is among the most important cut flowers in Malaysia especially for export market. The main problem for chrysanthemum in Malaysia is the lack of new varieties to meet the ever-changing customer demands. To generate new chrysanthemum plant varieties using ion beams, this report discusses irradiation experiments for nodal cultures of chrysanthemum Pink variety. stems were cut into single nodes (0.5 cm in length) and cultured approximately 5 days before irradiation. Data on the survival of cultures, regenerated shoot height and number of leaves were taken 8 weeks after irradiation. The results suggested that the sensitivity of nodes to ion beam irradiation is similar to that of their ray floret counterparts examined last year.