Atomic gardening

Former Atomic Gardening Society President Muriel Howorth shows popular garden writer Beverley Nichols a two-foot-high (61 cm) peanut plant grown from an irradiated nut in her own backyard.

Atomic gardening is a form of mutation breeding where plants are exposed to radiation. Some of the mutations produced thereby have turned out to be useful. Typically this is gamma radiation – in which case it is a gamma garden[1] – produced by cobalt-60.[2]

The practice of plant irradiation has resulted in the development of more than 2,000 new varieties of plants, most of which are now used in agricultural production.[3] One example is the resistance to verticillium wilt of the 'Todd's Mitcham'[4] cultivar of peppermint, which was produced from a breeding and test program at Brookhaven National Laboratory from the mid-1950s. Additionally, the Rio Red Grapefruit, developed at the Texas A&M Citrus Center in the 1970s and approved in 1984, accounted for more than three quarters of the grapefruit produced in Texas by 2007.[5]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Auto15-1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Twilley was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Ahloowalia, B. S.; Maluszynski, M.; Nichterlein, K. (February 1, 2004). "Global impact of mutation-derived varieties". Euphytica. 135 (2): 187–204. doi:10.1023/B:EUPH.0000014914.85465.4f. ISSN 0014-2336. S2CID 34494057.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference van Harten was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Broad, William J. (August 28, 2007). "Useful Mutants, Bred With Radiation". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 1, 2017. Retrieved April 30, 2017.