Novel Solution to Improve the Moss Bag Technique in Environmental Biological Monitoring

Abstract Low-dose radiation may stimulate growth in plants in general and in mosses in particular, and thus has the potential to enhance the ability to absorb the airborne elements of mosses used in the moss bag technique by making them growth better. The effect of low-energy X-ray radiation dose on the growth of Babular indica moss was investigated through an experiment with 20 doses in the range from 1Gy to 20Gy, 1Gy-interval. The results showed that the dose from 2Gy to 16Gy improved the growth of moss compared to control sample which is non-irradiated sample, and the optimal stimulatory effect was determined at the dose of 14Gy expressed in morphological characteristics, weight of the moss in the treatments and total chlorophyll content in their phyllids. The dose 14Gy was chosen to irradiate moss which was exposed in monitoring environment. The results of analysis of concentrations of the elements deposited in the air using Total Reflection X-ray Fluorescence (TXRF) technique for irradiated moss samples, non-irradiated moss samples, and native moss samples showed that the ability to absorb the elements from the air of irradiated moss was significantly improved compared to non-irradiated moss but still generally lower compared to natural moss. The findings of this study show that low-dose (14Gy) radiation treatment of mosses is one of the promising effective solutions to improve the accuracy of the results and reflect air conditions closer to reality in the environmental monitoring by moss bag technique.