ABSTRACT
Many people underestimate the ability of plants to adapt to environmental change. For over 20 years, ozone depletion and the subsequent impact of increased levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, notably UV-B, on higher plants has been investigated (1). Many researchers fail to recognize that the plants they study are typically the product of millions of years of evolution and that increased levels of solar radiation will have little to no influence on the viability of most plant species. What needs to be investigated is the "chemical soup" that the plant cells produce and the mixture that they will produce in response to changing amounts of radiation. Will radiation change the chemical constituents of plant cells and tissues? Will nature's kitchen produce compounds yet unseen? Will the compounds in the plant tissues remain the same but the relative percentages change? Given that people are dependent on plants as a source of energy as well as for medical purposes, the above questions must be answered to assure our survival. In this investigation, we wanted to determine if a commercially important plant, Brassica oleracea, would exhibit internal and external qualitative and quantitative changes in secondary metabolites in response to short- and long-term enhanced low-intensity UV radiation.
