11 ms·
Atomic Gardening
- jeffwass 5y agoI 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&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html?_r=1&... [21] https://mvd.iaea.org/ https://mvd.iaea.org/
- superkuh 5y agoThe Rio red variety was not developed in 2007. It was developed in the 1980s, in, you guessed it: Rio, Brazil. When I first heard about this some handful of years ago I was naturally curious about how a researcher in Rio in the 1980s had access to thermal neutrons without a fission reactor. After a lot of reference digging and discussion on physics forums we came to the conclusion it was most likely a penning trap style fusor with some thick moderator. The Mars Curiosity rover also had/has a penning style trap for generating neutrons to probe for underground water sources.
- pfdietz 5y agoWhat makes you think "Penning Trap"? Neutron generator tubes have been used since forever in the oil well logging industry. They use an electric field to accelerate deuterium ions into a solid target containing deuterium or tritium. As far as I know, fusors have never been commercially successful as neutron generators. Also, why would one use neutrons for plant mutagenesis? Photons are far easier to make. An x-ray tube will produce a given (biologically effective) dose at a very small fraction of the cost of a neutron generator.
- pfdietz 5y agoThe Curiosity neutron source is indeed a conventional pulsed sealed-tube neutron source, not a Penning trap. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5253560_The_Dynamic_Albedo_of_Neutrons_DAN_experiment_for_NASA's_2009_Mars_Science_Laboratory https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5253560_The_Dynamic...
- superkuh 5y agoSorry I wasn't clear. The DAN and other pulsed sealed tube neutron sources use a penning trap for their ion sources. But yeah, it was an incomplete and inaccurate wording.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- legulere 5y agoAnother helpful technique for stimulating genetic changes is colchicine, which induces polyploidy.
- hirundo 5y agoIf I take colchicine for gout is there an extra risk of polyploidy in my little swimmers?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hirundo 5y agoHow 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.
- DominoTree 5y agoI think the most likely scenario would be the plant expressing a new (or modified) allergenic protein, and it seems like there are some decent methods to look for those things already in use. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251449018_Mitigating_Allergenicity_of_Crops https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251449018_Mitigatin...
- tlb 5y agoAlso likely is that part of the genome that produces toxins in one part of the plant that isn't normally eaten gets turned on in edible part. For example: asparagus berries are toxic, but the toxin doesn't appear in the stalk. The mechanism to produce the toxic chemical is there, just turned off in those cells. Enabling it is the sort of thing that small mutations might do.
- mlang23 5y agoThinking about this actually makes me sick to the stomache.
- rbinv 5y agoSame thing happens naturally all the time.
- pharmakom 5y agoSo The Simpsons episode with “tomacco” wasn’t entirely unrealistic!
- b3morales 5y agoTomatoes and tobacco are actually reasonably closely related already: same Family, Solanaceae. (I wouldn't be surprised if that fact inspired the episode.) They might even be cross-breedable as is.
- bguebert 5y agoI kinda remember reading an article about someone in England that was doing this with tomatoes and potatoes. They do it with a graft though instead of genetic modification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomato https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomato
- SigmundA 5y agoIt 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.
- briefcomment 5y agoI'm guessing it's more about transparency. Monsanto using a proprietary genome for the sake of increasing yield at scale seems fundamentally different than a local farmer who selectively breeds to maintain some heirloom crop. I think the former is much more of a black box and has more potential for something unexpected to occur than the latter.
- bostonsre 5y agoWould both of your examples be labeled as gmo?
- mlavin 5y agoGMO implies a lab process with specific alteration of genes, while traditional plant breeding to traits only exposes phenotypes as indication of results, and relies on the pre-existing variance in species to provide new traits.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
- favoritecolor 5y agoThis is a pretty brute force method for genetic engineering -- and yet it works! It's essentially just pressing fast forward on evolution. But this is wildly inefficient. Plant genomes are often ridiculously large (e.g., the onion genome is 4X the size of the human genome), so you either have to throw a bunch of mutagen on the plant (which can cause off-target, toxic mutations) and/or plant a bunch of seedlings to get the plant you're looking for. New methods often include introducing new genes with mutations through agrobacteria, gold nanoparticle bombardment, etc. without needing to actually mutagenize a plant genome. Do your mutagenesis on a specific gene in bacteria, and then test those random genetic variants in plants. But for me, what is more exciting is a relatively new shift toward targeted mutagenesis directly in plants. For example, CRISPR can be used to target mutations to specific genes in situ (and not insertions or deletions -- useful point mutations through the use of base editors) [0]. I think the directed evolution of plants will be a pretty fruitful (lol) area of research in the future, and I'm excited to see where that field goes. Gotta love new plants! [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-020-00288-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-020-00288-9 -- see section "Mutagenesis and directed evolution"
- dls2016 5y ago> plant a bunch of seedlings to get the plant you're looking for This happens anyway, based on my understanding of fruit tree breeding at US land-grant universities.
- awild 5y agoHop breeding works that way, plants are actively bred. The ones that are agronomically useful will see bigger and bigger plantings until they are tried at market. When they either fail or establish themselves (to the point of completely overtaking the market like citra did). With wine it's similar so I suspect its just how most of this works. https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2021/3/3/how-a-hop-earns-its-name https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2021/3/3/how-a-hop-ear...
- asdff 5y agoGetting the mutation is not an issue, its understanding what the mutation does to the organism that's the hard part, and that still usually means planting a bunch of seedlings to screen for favorable progeny.
- _Microft 5y agoHere are more pictures of such a garden: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/atomic-gardening-breeding-plants-with.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/atomic-gardening-breed...
- londons_explore 5y agoMy understanding is plants are fairly radiation resistant compared to animals... A small fault in the leaf of a plant just kills that leaf, but a small fault in your heart kills you... If that's the case, I'd be a little worried even being in a plane flying over that garden...
- _Microft 5y agoThe source might be in a container that is shielded in such a way that it only allows radiation to escape sideways which will then eventually end up absorbed in the dike wall.
- mumblemumble 5y agoI'm immediately curious what percentage of non-GMO certified produce are cultivars that were produced this way. This approach strikes me as being much more likely to accidentally produce unexpectedly harmful effects than modern gene recombination.
- bostonsre 5y agoWhy do you think it would be more prone to do that compared with newer approaches?
- mumblemumble 5y agoWith gene recombination, you're inserting specific, known genes into the organism's DNA. The possible range of consequences of that modification is at least reasonably predictable. With atomic gardening, you're changing the genetic code at random, and I would guess that you really have no decent way of knowing exactly what's changed and what effects it might have. So you're only going to notice things that are really obvious, or that you specifically looked for. And you can't just do a dragnet search for every possible effect, because that would get you sent to the 4th circle of scientific hell. [1] Personally I'm not worried about whether Rio Star grapefruit is safe to eat. (About as safe as any food can be, that is. This morning I stumbled across something about french press coffee being bad for cholesterol levels, and can't help but think that, if you look hard enough, you can probably find some way in which every food is killing you. Which isn't to say that nothing matters, but one of the things that does matter is effect size. But I digress.) It's been around for a long time and people have been eating it with no apparent ill effects. But I'm pretty sure I'm not using the same risk calculus as folks who belong to the non-GMO certification program's target market. [1]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612459519 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612459519
- DominoTree 5y agoYeah, you're basically scrambling things across an entire genome with no way to account for all of the random and unspecific changes that may occur. One thing to consider though is that our bodies have evolved to eat all sorts of DNA - fragments and full genes - without directly incorporating it into our own genomes. I'd personally be more concerned about plants expressing new allergenic proteins or that sort of thing, but it seems like there are already some decent methods in use to detect that.
- Asparagirl 5y agoEven today, within what could be called the “fancy houseplant” community of garden enthusiasts, we hear stories about Indonesian farmers purposely and repeatedly putting houseplants through airport X-Ray machines to try to induce variegation in their offspring. There are also plants like the Pink Congo, where growers use ethylene gas and auxin hormones to temporarily create pink foliage: https://www.wired.com/story/pink-princess-plantfluencers-pink-congo-scam/ https://www.wired.com/story/pink-princess-plantfluencers-pin...
- ashwal 5y agoWhere does the fancy houseplant community hangout on the internet? I’m intrigued
- Asparagirl 5y agoInstagram, Facebook, and YouTube, believe it or not! Instagram has been a big driver of houseplant sales; people see other people showing off their plants and their “shelfies” (plant shelf selfies), in gorgeous glamour photos, and it drives demand of the plants and discussion in the comments. Instagram is also a direct sales channel for Indonesian, Thai, and Sri Lankan growers, who often don’t speak English well but know how to tag the photos of their crops in English, so you can search the hashtags and get daily photos of ready stock. And buyers and sellers then use Google Translate to complete the sales in Instagram messages. I usually reach out to multiple growers in Instagram messages to get their latest price lists, compare them to the latest photos in the feeds, and then do a little arbitrage. Facebook groups are huge for houseplant geeks. And while FB may have a reputation for older folks, the people in these groups trend much younger, many in their twenties. There are groups divvied up by care tips per specific species, and “BST” (Buy, Sell, Trade) groups that are for commerce but not really discussion, and even regional groups that build up local communities. For example, the Bay Area has BART: Bay Area Rare Tropicals, but also Bay Area Hoya. People post what they’re looking for, and do sales and swaps and even arrange transportation for newly purchased plants (i.e. if you’re going from Livermore to Palo Alto mid-week, can you bring my philodendron). These groups tend to have large and active administrator teams, and tracking reputation within the communities/groups helps cut way down on scammers. If you sell someone a crappy plant, or conversely if you waste a seller’s time and flake out on your purchase, word will get around. Finally, there is some seriously great plant content on YouTube. Detailed how-to videos, propagation experiments, tours of rare plant nurseries and stores, and many people use that content to drive traffic to their own store or to promote their favorite stores. Rare plant unboxing videos are a whole genre! And they’re extra suspenseful because a decent number of wholesale deliveries from overseas do arrive dead. Outside of those three, Etsy has become a major sales channel for rare houseplant sales. And just so we’re clear, rare houseplants can go for hundreds of dollars. Price inflation isn’t just for lumber, it’s philodendrons, too.
- beefman 5y agoAccording to this article,[1] cultivars produced with this method include Calrose 76 rice and Todd's Mitcham peppermint, which respecively account for roughly half of California's rice crop and a majority of the world's peppermint [1] http://www.ediblegeography.com/strange-and-beautiful-seeds-from-the-atom/ http://www.ediblegeography.com/strange-and-beautiful-seeds-f...
- rmbeard 5y agoShould I try this in my back yard?
- ehw3 5y agoYeah, where do I go to get my tomato seeds irradiated? Is there something on Amazon I can buy for that?
- gxqoz 5y agoSurely the best song (mostly) with this title, Bad Religion's "Atomic Garden": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhzhiQA6-Aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhzhiQA6-Aw
- ambyra 5y agoThe Simpsons Tomacco episode comes to mind: “ugh, this is terrible... I want more!!”
- snarfy 5y agoThis reminds me of an article [1] I read a long time ago on erowid about people using gout medication to turn cannabis seeds into polyploid 'superweed'. [1] - https://erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_cultivation14.shtml https://erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_cultivation14.sh...