Morphological, molecular and phytochemical variations induced by colchicine and EMS chemical mutagens in Crocus sativus L.

Crocus sativus L., also known as saffron, is one of the most important medicinal and spice plants throughout the world. The plant is a rich source of apocarotenoids such as crocetin esters, picrocrocin, and safranal. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of colchicine and ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) mutagens on possible inducing new variation in C. sativus. Accordingly, corms were exposed to EMS (0.1% and 0.2%) and colchicine (0.05% and 0.025%) for three incubation times. The lowest survival rate of corms was related to EMS treatments. The relative expression of ALDH, BGL, and CCD2 genes under 0.025% colchicine treatment for 12 h revealed a 2 fold increase compared with the control. The flow cytometric measurements (FCM) of the nuclear DNA content of the colchicine-treated plants did not reveal any significant changes in 2C DNA content. The results, manifest the potential of mutagens to create new variations in the plant.