Atomic gardening & Atomic gardening mutants

Author: 
marvelous cataclysm
Locality: 

Atomic gardening is a form of mutation breeding where plants are exposed to radioactive sources, typically cobalt-60,[1] in order to generate mutations, some of which have turned out to be useful.

The practice of plant irradiation has resulted in the development of over 2000 new varieties of plants, most of which are now used in agricultural production.[2] One example is the resistance to verticillium wilt of the "Todd's Mitcham"[3] cultivar of peppermint, which was produced from a breeding and test program at Brookhaven National Laboratory from the mid-1950s. Additionally, the Rio Star Grapefruit, developed at the Texas A&M Citrus Center in the 1970s, now accounts for over three quarters of the grapefruit produced in Texas.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, the Atomic Gardening Society declined by the mid 1960s. This was due to a combination of a shifting political climate away from atomic energy and a failure on the part of the crowd sourced Society to produce noteworthy results.[10] In spite of this, large-scale gamma gardens remained in use, and a number of commercial plant varieties were developed and released by laboratories and private companies alike.

p.E. Colorado Irradiado groundnut (mutant created with X-rays; high fat content and yield, 80% of groundnuts grown in Argentina in the 1980s was Colorado Irradiado)

Golden Promise barley (semi-dwarf, salt tolerant mutant created with gamma rays) Is used to make beer and whisky

Stadler wheat (high yield mutant with resistance to loose smut and leaf rust and earlier maturity)
Star Ruby and Rio red varieties of the Rio Star Grapefruit (created using thermal neutron techniques)

VND 95-20, VND-99-1 and VN121 rice mutants (increased yield, improved quality, resistance to disease and pests)

Luther and Pennrad barley (high yield mutant varieties; Pennrad also resistant to winter)

NIAB-78 cotton mutant (high yielding, heat tolerant, early maturing)
http://chicago.indymedia.org
MA-9 cotton - the world's first mutant cotton, released in 1948 (X-ray radiation; drought tolerance, high yielding)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding#Release_by_nation

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.