Atomic seeds were irradiated seeds, sold during the 50s-60s. The radiation caused mutations.
These seed packets were available from science supply catalogs, & from the backs of some comic books.
Were there health risks risks?
Where are the plants now?
Did they have any lasting impact on the flower/vegetable gene pool?
Can you get them today?
Any information, including personal reminiscences, is welcome.
There’s certainly no radiation risk. With very rare exceptions that don’t apply here, just exposing something to radiation does not make it radioactive.
And a lot of the varieties we know and love today were developed in this way. Take a bunch of seeds, expose them to some mutagen, and comb through the thousands of possible mutations for one or two with beneficial traits, then breed the heck out of those.
There are also space seeds.
Thwip – Thwip!
It’s Seed Man! The new Super-Hero
as a student, he was bitten by a radioactive seed, and now has the abilities of seeds.
He can helicopter around like a maple seed, drift on the winds like a milkweed seed.
He can bore into the ground like an Erodium seed
He can poison you like many poisonous seeds, or grab onto your clothes with his burr hooks, like a Xanthium seed.
Watch out for the Adventures of Seed Man, annoying lawbreakers and evildoers until they give up in frustration!
In addition to creating new plant hybrids, radiation has been used to map plant genomes and do other studies:
For some reason, radiation-induced hybrids have not gotten any significant opposition from the same people that attack the much more precise genetically modified hybrids as “unnatural” and “dangerous”.
Well, Gilligan got super strength. Until they had to eat the soap.
There is a risk in eating food grown from irradiated seeds: there could be a mutation that turned the edible part of the plant poisonous. Not hugely likely in plants that don’t have any known toxins anywhere, but possible. And more likely in plants that do have toxic parts already.
Not just flowers either; the popular Rio Red and Star Ruby grapefruit varieties were produced through this method of plant breeding as well. Same for Calrose rice, and a whole bunch of other commonly utilized food plant varieties, such as Golden Promise barley used extensively in the UK for whisky and beer production.
Do the irradiated seeds grow into mutants, or do the offspring of plants that were irradiated as seeds?
In fact, there’s no prohibition against radiation-bred varieties bearing the label ‘organic’. So, your typical anti-GMO activist who’s vehemently opposed to organisms bearing a few precisely controlled genetic changes happily buys their organic produce bearing randomly introduced genetic changes all over the place.
Ref the OP - More here: Mutation breeding - Wikipedia . It’s a bog-standard tactic now.
Not sure what you mean. If seeds are irradiated their DNA may change. If the DNA does change AND if they successfully grow into plants, then they will be (by definition) mutant plants. As will all the seeds they produce and all their offspring. etc.
Recognizing that “mutant” is simply a way to say “different than some reference standard”. All plants and animals are constantly mutating in very minor ways. This totally natural process goes on all the time. Irradiating seeds in this way is simply intending to stir the genetic pot especially vigorously and hope something useful happens to fall out. It usually doesn’t, but once in awhile it does.
[QUOTE=LSLGuy;19968281If the DNA does change AND if they successfully grow into plants, then they will be (by definition) mutant plants. As will all the seeds they produce and all their offspring. etc.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks.
The seeds themselves will contain a random assortment of mutations in every cell. Some of those cells will end up as the ancestors of a particular seed, and their mutations will be passed on. Other cells will never directly contribute their genetic material to a seed, but they will divide and form the cells that make up the rest of the plant. In the end, the adult plant will have a mosaic of different mutations, but most of the mutations will not be passed on to the next generation.
I just noticed your username. Is there anything *else *you’d care to share with us? … Audrey?
In reality anti-GMO people were the same people who strictly opposed irradiation for food 10 years ago. It is untrue to suggest they like one but not the other.
Besides had those seeds of the '60s increased, say, dementia in the American people, the effects would be evident right now.
I recall visiting Oak Ridge in the 1960s and being shown a piece of fish wrapped in plastic foil and irradiated. It would keep on the shelf indefinitely. I expected to find it on store shelves when I got home. Apparently consumers were terrified of having their food messed with.
When I was in high school we had a lecturer who came in and talked about food irradiation. He said that irradiation affected the flavor of foods, making it duller and “flatter”, then made a joke about them selling such food to high school cafeterias And this was from a proponent of irradiation.
The Wikipedia article on Food Irradiation backs him up, to some degree.
Other sites either see extreme changes in taste ( http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/food_irradiation_gross_failure.pdf and Irradiated Meat: Safer But Tastes A Little 'Off' ) or none ( http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Suppliers2/Irradiation-kills-pathogens-not-taste-according-to-study ), depending, I suspect, on what side of the issue the authors are on.
But there’s a case that it’s not necessarily consumer jumpiness about irradiation, but something at more of a gut level.
Thanks, CalMeacham.
I was a youth in 4-H in the 1960’s and recall getting a packet of civil defense stuff, like the pamphlet In Time of Emergency (a uplifting read!), basic first-aid kit lists, and several packages of irradiated seeds. You were to do this as a 4-H project, growing the irradiated seeds next to normal seeds to compare the growth and yield. We didn’t actually do that, since it was the wrong time of year (and they might have had expiration dates). No, we didn’t eat the seeds either.
In the same line, at a flea market I found a irradiated dime in an metal enclosure for the Oak Ridge Lab (Tennessee). The half-life was so short they didn’t really have any radiation left in them; they were made as souvenirs.
It seems like both the seeds and dimes were part of “life is normal in the atomic age” propaganda from the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
Most commonly found on Ceti Alpha V.