Nuclear Plant Breeding Could Help Feed the World’s Hungry

Plant breeding and nuclear science might be at extreme ends of the technological spectrum, but scientists believe that ‘going nuclear’ could help bolster the efforts to produce high-yielding plants and help save millions from hunger. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is urging for increased use of mutation induction, or the use of radiation, to breed crops that can resist diseases and survive harsh conditions such as drought and flood. The Agency says that the technique is proven and cost-effective and has been used since the 1920s.

“To provide sustainable, long-term solutions, we must make use of all available resources. Selecting the crops that are better able to feed us is one of humankind’s oldest sciences. But we’ve neglected to give it the support and investment it requires for universal application,” says IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. “The IAEA is urging a revival of nuclear crop breeding technologies to help tackle world hunger.”

Examples of successfully released mutant crops include disease resistant cassava in Ghana, rice tolerant to saline conditions in Vietnam, wheat that can survive Kenya’s arid regions and barley that grows well in the high Andes.

The press release is available at ftp://ftp.iaea.org/dist/adpi/PressCampaign/PressRelease/FoodSecurityPressRelease.pdf