Chapter 4: The Use of Higher Plants in the Comet Assay

Plants are exposed to many environmental pollutants that are globally dispersed through aerial or aqueous pathways. In addition, agronomic crops as well as other plants are deliberately exposed to pesticides and other chemicals applied in modern agriculture. Assays to detect the genotoxicity of these pollutants are at present not available for most plant species. This limitation hampers or prevents the detection of the genotoxicity of xenobiotics in plants growing, for example, on polluted soil. To overcome the limitation, the Comet assay can be applied to detect DNA damage in plants.