title: A water-based triphenyltetrazolium chloride method for the evaluation of green plant tissue viability.
abstract: A water-based 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) partitioning method using n-hexane for the evaluation of green plant tissue viability has been developed. Conventionally, the reduction of TTC to insoluble red-coloured triphenylformazan (TPF) has been used to detect seed, bud, leaf and cultured cell viability. However, the 95% ethanol used to extract TPF also extracts various pigments, such as chlorophyll, from plant tissues which interfere with the absorption of TPF at 485 nm. This new water-based method improves upon the current method by eliminating the interfering pigments in the hexane layer, and by minimising the non-enzymatic oxidation of the sample. When used to evaluate the tissue viability of chillstressed waxapple (Syzygium samarangense) plants, the refined method had a greater sensitivity than the electrolyte leakage method and thus provided a more precise assessment for the physiological state of various plant tissues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China. chlin@mail.nchu.edu.tw
authors.forename: C H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: B S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: S W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Chiang
mesh_terms: D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D010944:Plants / Q000737:chemistry*; D013778:Tetrazolium Salts / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D013778:Tetrazolium Salts; C009591:triphenyltetrazolium