Sodium Azide: a Chemical Mutagen for Enhancement of Agronomic Traits of Crop Plants

Sodium azide, a chemical mutagen has become important tool to enhance agronomic traits of crop plants. It is being used to produce resistance in various susceptible crops to improve their yield and quality traits against harmful pathogens. There are several mutagens available for crop improvement and each mutagen has its important role as positive or negative effects on crops. Sodium azide creates point mutation in the genome of plants through metabolite and thus produced protein in mutant plants has different function compared to the normal plants. The mutant plants produced by the treatment of sodium azide are capable to survive under various adverse conditions and have improved yields, increased stress tolerance, longer shelf life and reduced agronomic input in comparison to normal plants. The selection of plant mutants is based on morphological, biochemical and DNA based markers. The DNA based markers are reliable and reproducible for mutant selection for any crops used in the study. The few DNA based marker are available for plant researcher for point mutation detection caused by sodium azide. Since, sodium azide creates point mutation, A.T-->G.C base pair transition and transversion, and hence all DNA based markers cannot apply for point mutation detection. In this review, we are focusing the mutagenic effects of NaN3 and its application in crop improvement.