Structural Changes Produced in Leaf Tissue of Soy Bean Plants by Irradiation of the Dry Seeds with Soft X-rays.

Introduction In a recent paper NOGuCHI (2) described histological studies made on the structure of Russian sunflower leaves grown from seeds irradiated at the stage of incipient germination, with hard, or short wave-length, x-rays. This paper describes a similar study in which the seeds used were dormant soy beans and the radiation was soft, or long wave-length, x-rays generated by a gas x-ray tube (1). Although it is not the purpose of this paper to compare the two types of radiation with regard to their ability to produce deformed plants from irradiated seeds it may be said that if a given quantity of radiant energy in the x-ray region here considered should strike the surface of a seed, a greater part of it would be absorbed by the seed if the radiation were of long wave-length than if it were of short wave-length. If the extent of the deformity produced in the plants grown from x-irradiated seeds depends on the quantity of energy they have absorbed, then one would expect the longer wave-length to produce the greater deformity, if the incident quantities of energy were alike.