Assessment of Cytotoxic and Genotoxic Effects of Clodinafop-propargyl Commercial Formulation on Allium cepa L

Pesticides constitute a heterogeneous category of chemicals specifically designed for the control of pests, weeds or plant diseases. Pesticides have been considered potential chemical mutagens. In the present study, the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of the commercial herbicide Topik (containing 80g/L clodinafop-propargyl and 20 g/l cloquintocet-mexyl) was determined using Allium cepa root tip cells. The EC50 value was determined as 126.51 ppm using a root growth inhibition test and then the roots were treated with 30, 60, 120, 150 and 240 ppm concentrations for 48 h. The results indicated that topik significantly decreased the mitotic index (MI) in all treatments when compared with the control group in a dose-dependent manner. On the other hand, topik affected the percentage of mitotic stages. For the genotoxic potential, topik significantly increased the frequency of abnormal cells. The observed abnormalities types were breaks which seem to be the most frequent type, bridges, C-mitosis, laggards and stickiness. This study indicates that topik decreased the mitotic index and produced clastogenic and aneugenic types of abnormalities in Allium cepa tip cells. The data obtained in this study showed that plant bioassays is a useful and an important test battery to detect possible genotoxicity of chemicals.