Atomic Gardening
en.wikipedia.org
Atomic Gardening
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Re: Atomic Gardening
#2I heard about this on the radio and was surprised I hadn't heard of Atomic Gardening before. Basically, farmers and gardeners would expose large quantities of seeds and plants to varying degrees of radiation, and look for useful mutations.
Rio Red grapefruits, accounting for 3/4 of Texan-produced grapefruit, were originally created by Atomic Gardening! From the Grapefruit wiki, which links to the Atomic Gardening one :
"Using radiation to trigger mutations, new varieties were developed to retain the red tones that typically faded to pink. The 'Rio Red' variety is a 2007 Texas grapefruit with registered trademarks Rio Star and Ruby-Sweet, also sometimes promoted as Reddest and Texas Choice. The 'Rio Red' is a mutation-bred variety that was developed by treatment of bud sticks with thermal neutrons. Its improved attributes of mutant variety are fruit and juice color, deeper red, and wide adaptation.[21]"
[20] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html?_r=1&...
Re: Atomic Gardening
#3[deleted]
Re: Atomic Gardening
#4Another helpful technique for stimulating genetic changes is colchicine, which induces polyploidy.
Re: Atomic Gardening
#5How likely is a random mutation in a plant to be dangerous to the eater? E.g. a protein sequence changed such that a toxic molecule is produced. If subtle or slow acting that could pass a lot of expensive testing and make it to market. But is it risky enough to worry about?
Sure it could occur with natural mutations too but at a much lower rate.
Re: Atomic Gardening
#6Another helpful technique for stimulating genetic changes is colchicine, which induces polyploidy.
If I take colchicine for gout is there an extra risk of polyploidy in my little swimmers?
Re: Atomic Gardening
#7Thinking about this actually makes me sick to the stomache.
Re: Atomic Gardening
#8So The Simpsons episode with “tomacco” wasn’t entirely unrealistic!
Re: Atomic Gardening
#9It always amuses me to find that people are against GMO foods yet almost everything we eat is GMO depending on how you define it.
Almost every crop and livestock has been genetically modified through selective breeding (domestication).
Mutagenesis, which atomic gardening falls under, has been around since the 1920's using x-rays and chemicals and currently doesn't normally fall under most GMO definitions because its "traditional".
There is also profile guided selection, which is just selective breeding while using modern DNA profiling to make it more effective by watching genetic outcomes directly.
Then there is genetically engineered targeted gene insertion which is what most people consider "GMO" but hasn't been shown to cause any health issues, its just scary because it's done in a modern lab.
It's not that I'm against being cautious with genetically engineered organism (testing etc), but what issue are we solving by labeling an GE organism "GMO" vs a mutagenic one, or a selectively bred one? Is there any data to suggest one is more dangerous than the other? I seem to have a hard time finding it.
Re: Atomic Gardening
#10Thinking about this actually makes me sick to the stomache.
Same thing happens naturally all the time.