Evaluation of 10 chemicals for aneuploidy induction in the hexaploid wheat assay.

This study was a part of an international project sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities to evaluate the utility of certain bioassays including hexaploid wheat assay to identify potential aneugens. Ten suspect spindle poisons, i.e. colchicine (COL), cadmium chloride (CdCl2), chloral hydrate (CH), diazepam (DIZ), econazole (EZ), hydroquinone (HQ), pyrimethamine (PY), thiabendazole (TB), thimerosal (TM), and vinblastin sulphate (VBL) were tested for their ability to induce green and/or white leaf sectors as indicators of loss or gain of a chromosome respectively, in Neatby's strain of Chinese Spring wheat (2n = 6x = 42). All the chemicals tested in this study, with the exception of CH and HQ yielded positive response.