[ RadSafe ] Atomic gardening: Day of the irradiated peanuts

Mon Jun 13 12:03:47 CDT 2011

Dear Mike and all RADSAFErs who contributed to the topic of "atomic gardening".

I remember from my youth (many decades ago), that there was a very famous exhibition in Vienna about the peaceful use of "atomic energy". I was a student then and was fascinated, because I could view there a (tiny) nuclear reactor (rather a critical assembly) and all the positive prospective advantages and future applications of radiation. I remember very well, that the irradiation of seeds and fruits to produce positive mutations was mentioned as a very important task of the peaceful use of atomic radiation. This exhibition was just another piece in the puzzle why I chose "radioactivity" for my PhD work and further on. 

Best regards,

Franz

---- "Brennan schrieb:
> According to my reading, irradiating seeds (to certain levels that I
> don't recall) does produce better germinationtes, which lead to
> better crop yields, not by creating mutations but by killing pathogens
> in the form of bacterial and fungal spores on the seeds.  That is the
> basis for irradiated fruit and vegetabs of es lasting longer than the
> control groups.  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Harry Reynolds
> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 12:47 PM
> To: parthasarathy k s; The International RadiationProtection (Health
> Physics) Mailing List; radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Atomic gardening: Day of the irradiated peanuts
> 
> Somewhere in the long ago and far away I remember reports of China
> irradiating seeds with the results producing better germination and crop
> yield.
> 
> Harry`
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of parthasarathy
> k s
> Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 9:55 AM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing
> List; radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Atomic gardening: Day of the irradiated peanuts
> 
> Dear Mr Dawson,
> 
> Thank you very much for the New Scientist essay describing, the history
> of mutation breeding. This is one area where India made gigantic
> strides. The following URL gives an idea about the developments in
> mutation breeding, food irradiation and agricultural applications of
> modern technology in India:
> http://www.barc.ernet.in/rcaindia/4_1.html
> 
> Regards
> Parthasarathy
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Fred Dawson GoogleMail <fred.wp.dawson at googlemail.com>
> To: radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
> Sent: Friday, 10 June 2011, 16:18
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Atomic gardening: Day of the irradiated peanuts
> 
> From New Scientist
> 
> One March day in 1959, in the sleepy British seaside town of Eastbourne,
> a
> nuclear enthusiast decided to feed her dinner guests irradiated peanuts
> and
> potatoes that had been preserved with radioactive sodium. While Muriel
> Howorth's guests were unsure about their repast, the unusual dinner was
> the
> start of an unforeseen chain reaction that led to the birth of one of
> the
> quirkiest horticultural collectives there has ever been: the Atomic
> Gardening Society.
> 
> The society encouraged members to grow plants under radioactive
> conditions
> so that beneficial mutations would arise. The idea might sound strange,
> even
> dangerous, now - but back in the 1950s it was part of a broader trend.
> The
> movement was part of a concerted effort in the US and Europe to find
> beneficial uses for atomic energy after the destruction caused by the
> atomic
> bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
> 
> In his 1953 "Atoms for Peace" speech to the United Nations general
> assembly,
> US President Dwight Eisenhower highlighted a turning point in attitudes
> to
> nuclear power when he stated that it should be "constructive, not
> destructive". He also proposed the International Atomic Agency be set
> up,
> where "experts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of
> agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities". 
> 
> In "gamma gardens" run by national laboratories in the US, plants
> growing in
> concentric circles were bombarded with radiation from a central source -
> such as cobalt-60 - elevated on a pole. The pole could be lowered below
> ground when people were tending the plants. Plants nearest the centre
> tended
> to die, a little further out they developed tumours and developmental
> problems, but the plants furthest out sometimes developed potentially
> beneficial mutations. It was hoped the treatment could, for instance,
> produce colour changes in flowers, disease resistance in wheat and
> increased
> sugar content in maples. 
> 
> "If you think of genetic modification today as slicing the genome with a
> scalpel, in the 1960s they were hitting it with a hammer" says
> nanotechnologist Paige Johnson of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who
> researches garden history in her spare time. 
> 
> Johnson discovered the Atomic Gardening society while studying atomic
> motifs
> in gardens. She was quite unprepared to find this literal expression of
> the
> power of the atom in the garden. "When I first heard about atomic
> gardening
> I thought it was a joke," she says. "It sounded like something out of
> the B
> movies of the 1950s - giant ants and that sort of thing." 
> 
> Giant ants maybe not, but the peanuts to which Howorth subjected her
> atomic
> dinner party guests had been bombarded with18,500 roentgens of X-rays -
> that's 37 times the dose that would kill a person in 5 hours. The
> peanuts
> originated in the lab of Walter Gregory of North Carolina State
> University,
> who would select beneficial mutants from the plants he zapped - those
> which
> produced larger or more numerous peanuts than usual. His thick-hulled
> "North
> Carolina fourth-generation X-rayed" (NC4x) strain was the size of an
> almond
> (Crops and Soils, vol 12, p 12), and it was one of these that he sent to
> Howorth.
> 
> Gregory called the NC4x as "a milestone in crop breeding". When a NC4x
> Howorth planted germinated in a quick four days, it was hailed by garden
> writer Beverley Nichols as: "the most sensational plant in Britain... It
> is
> the first 'atomic' peanut".
> 
> The media attention brought new members to the society and allowed
> Howorth
> to conduct an early crowdsourcing experiment. She imported irradiated
> Atomic
> Energised seeds from entrepreneur C. J. Speas of Tennessee and
> distributed
> them to members of the society, who looked for changes in their seeds
> and
> reported them on progress cards. These were then analysed by retired
> geneticists and plant biologists. 
> 
> It would be easy to dismiss atomic gardening as a naive and overzealous
> attempt to somehow make up for the ills of nuclear weapons. Nuclear
> energy
> seemed to promise not only free electricity but the eradication of
> famine -
> and the atomic gardeners had no qualms about releasing irradiated seeds
> into
> the environment. "They thought they were changing the world, and they
> weren't very self-reflective about that," says Johnson. 
> 
> The legacy of the atomic gardens can still be seen today. Working gamma
> gardens exist in Japan, and varieties descended from irradiated plants -
> such as the Rio red grapefruit - stack our supermarket shelves. 70 per
> cent
> of the peppermint sold in the US is descended from a mutant in a
> neutron-irradiated source. Even if atomic gardening was a misguided
> experiment, it has thrown up some unexpectedly tasty results. 
> 
> In 1963 Muriel passed the Atomic Gardening Society on to Thomas E. Grey.
> If
> anyone has any further information about him, or was a member of the
> society, please get in touch with Paige Johnson, who gave a talk on the
> Atomic Gardening Society at the Garden Museum in London yesterday. 
> 
> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/06/atomic-gardening-da
> y-of
> -the-irradiated-peanuts.html
> 
> http://gardenhistorygirl.blogspot.com/2010/12/atomic-gardens.html
> 
> 
> Fred Dawson
> New Malden
> England
> 
> 
> 
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