4 ms·
2 years after nuclear disaster, Japan spawns freaky fruits and veggies
- anigbrowl 13y agoI don't care for nuclear alarmism, and if you grow enough veggies some of them are going to come out strange, but that is a pretty disturbing set of pictures and suggests some systematic study of the fallout effects is warranted.
- gcb0 13y agothe set of similarly weird peaches is the only one that ticked me off.
- account90 13y agoIs it possible to use such radiation for plant breeding purposes? Some of those modifications (like gigantism) could be useful. Yes. "Chemical mutagens like EMS and DMS, radiation and transposons are used to generate mutants with desirable traits to be bred with other cultivars - a process known as Mutation Breeding." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding
- Scaevolus 13y agoYes, it's very common. ~75% of rice grown in California descends from seeds exposed to gamma radiation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
- SFN 13y agoIn the 1950's, seeds were exposed to Cobalt-60 and then sold for people to plant and grow into whatever they were mutated into. It was called "atomic gardening". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
- ISL 13y agoWithout a meaningful control and in the absence of any other information, it's impossible to make a meaningful conclusion.
- ekianjo 13y agoGreat, MSN journalism :"It might be wise to steer clear of vegetables from Japan's Fukushima area for, oh, say a few hundred years. ". Yeah, like you know what you are talking about. The radiation levels in Fukushima are lower than in some other parts of the world where natural radioactivity occurs. These pictures don't prove anything. When you grow vegetables you always get abnormalities. I have seen tons of discolorations, deformations, and other freaky products of nature when I was a kid. You don't need a nuclear incident to get that.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoI'm not sure what this proves. 5 minutes with /r/pics finds me all sorts of weird carrots: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/d17jf/i_grow_some_weird_carrots/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/d17jf/i_grow_some_weir... http://imgur.com/7T7g3 http://imgur.com/7T7g3 http://imgur.com/TULjm http://imgur.com/TULjm http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/da7t6/carrots_have_evolved_we_are_screwed/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/da7t6/carrots_have_evo... http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/rjxkf/i_found_a_double_helix_pair_of_carrots/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/rjxkf/i_found_a_double... And tomatoes: http://imgur.com/a/AeNuC http://imgur.com/a/AeNuC http://imgur.com/a/5luwR/mutant_tomatoe http://imgur.com/a/5luwR/mutant_tomatoe http://i.imgur.com/WGjZQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/WGjZQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NrUh0jH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NrUh0jH.jpg A search for "peach" finds me primarily princess peach, primarily in cosplay form.
- gus_massa 13y agoWith: peach fruit double Siamese Twin Peaches; Double and Triple Peach Fruits: http://xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com/2012/04/siamese-twin-peaches-double-and-triple.html http://xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com/2012/04/siamese-twin-...
- nitrogen 13y agoI've also seen ears of corn growing seeds of grass instead of kernels of corn, but sadly I don't have pictures. Mutations are fairly common in agriculture; the misshapen produce is usually removed before it gets to you at a store.
- nitrogen 13y agoThe article couldn't help but use the catchphrase of un-science, "You never know," twice.