Abstract

Plants are unique in their ability to serve as in situ monitors for environmental genotoxins.Trigonella is receiving global attention due to rare medicinal properties of significance. Cadmium is one of the most toxic environmental pollutant affecting absorption and transportation of essential elements, disturb the metabolism, growth and reproduction. Present experiment was designed to investigate the genotoxic damage on root tip cells exposed to cadmium nitrate [Cd(N0₃)₂] solution at six different concentration 25, 50, 75, 100 and 125 ppm. We evaluated with biological tests based on micronucleus (MN), Lipid peroxidation (MDA) and protein profiling (PP) assay inTrigonella foenum- graecum (var-azad). The results indicate that there was a direct correlation between increased MN frequency, increased MDA content, and increased in protein bands with the increasing concentrations of Cd and maximum damage was found at 125 ppm concentrations.Trigonella constantly exposed to heavy metals and endogenous processes inflict damage to DNA and cause genotoxic stress, which can reduce plant genome stability, growth and productivity.

Key words: Cadmium, genotoxicity, protein profiling, MDA content, Trigonella.