What does RBE mean in Botany?

Relative biological effectiveness

In radiology, the relative biological effectiveness is the ratio of biological effectiveness of one type of ionizing radiation relative to another, given the same amount of absorbed energy. The RBE is an empirical value that varies depending on the particles, energies involved, and which biological effects are deemed relevant. It is a set of experimental measurements. In dosimetry, the RBE is represented in regulations by the radiation weighting factor, or formerly, the quality factor. These weighting factors, arrived at by consensus of governments, industry, and regulators, convert absorbed dose into formal biological equivalent dose for radiation exposure. The higher the RBE or weighting factor numbers for a type of radiation, the more damaging is the type of radiation, per unit of energy deposited in biological tissues. Different types of radiation have different biological effectiveness mainly because they transfer their energy to the tissue in different ways. Photons and beta particles have a low linear energy transfer coefficient, meaning that they ionize atoms in the tissue that are spaced by several hundred nanometers apart, along their path. In contrast, the much more massive alpha particles and neutrons leave a denser trail of ionized atoms in their wake, spaced about one tenth of a nanometer apart.

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