An assortment of agrichemicals (herbicides, pesticides and fungicides) recommended for use on maize was examined as additives to our 5 day old plumule/radicle system designed earlier for stress studies. Each agrichemical was examined in five temperature regimes (20, 30, 40, 20-30 and 30-40), at three 'doses' (0, 0.01, 1.0 and 10.0 'FD.', where 'FD.'was the manufacturer's recommended field dose) for both plumules and radicles.

Standard procedures (Baszczynski, C. L., D. B. Walden and B. G. Atkinson, Canad. J. Biochem. 60:569-579, 1982) were followed to produce fluorograms from 1 and 2D IEFLSDS PAGE electrophorograms. Visual examination of these fluorograms permitted the response to be classified in one or more of four categories:

Table.

Equally revealing and undoubtedly more accurate were the data from the uptake/incorporation of ³⁵S-methionine into TCA precipitable material. In controls, on a dry weight basis, there is approximately 3x protein in plumules as in radicles. However, the incorporation of ³⁵S is 10x greater per unit protein in radicles than in plumules. Agrichernicals in classes II, III and IV above provoke a similar response in incorporation of ³⁵S-methionine as in protein synthesis.

These studies are continuing and being extended to other possible stress inducing factors.

D. B. Walden and R. B. Zabulionis

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