Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

1.5K

Anyone have experience with atomic gardening? Essentially poor mans genetic modification. Blast some seeds or blooming plants with radiation and see what happens.

Seems like it's been abandoned in the US, but is still used in many other countries. Notably Japan with it's Institute of Radiation Breeding, and China with it's Plant Space Breeding.

links: a website about atomic gardening (atomicgardening.com) a youtuber puts seeds with radioactive material (youtube.com)

Anyone have experience with atomic gardening? Essentially poor mans genetic modification. Blast some seeds or blooming plants with radiation and see what happens. Seems like it's been abandoned in the US, but is still used in many other countries. Notably Japan with it's Institute of Radiation Breeding, and China with it's Plant Space Breeding. links: [a website about atomic gardening](https://www.atomicgardening.com/) [a youtuber puts seeds with radioactive material](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiCFhfVS-ig&t=624s)

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (6).
[–] • 1 pt

The ideal dosage for seed mutation is around 10-40 Sieverts. Even in a really high radon basement it would take 500 years to get to the low end of that dose. Although it would only take around 20 days in that radon tunnel.

[–] • 0 pt

The video pointed to their ability to do a true double blind study; as the tunnel itself is not actually producing the radon but rather the ventilation system.

by your own calculations... these two measured samples of: 636 pCi/L (23,500 Bq/m³) 133.3 pCi/L (4930 Bq/m³) would equal an exposure time of 42-203 days for an ideal dosage.

according to this: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1263&context=ihpbc

There is no reason why you couldn't replicate this for yourself.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

I think that a seeds hull would stop the alpha radiation from radon, but the live plants could receive sufficient dose to mutate the progeny. It seems some plants may sequester radon as well.

A UV-C sterilizer could work too. Ionizing radiation has a good track record for heritable mutations. I would be able to impliment a UV sterilizer in my current greenhouse.

A study on UVB/UVC radiation on seeds (mdpi.com)

[–] • 1 pt

I'm aware the "idea" is to radiate the seeds but to me it seems more plausible the parent plant is passing on its genetics based on its Epigenetics. In the reproduction cycle of one plant raised under "controlled conditions", you could expose it to an ideal amount of genetic distress that would cause a wide variety of offspring, an obviously beneficial response for a plant under that kind of stress... it would at least give some of it's descendants a very good chance at adapting to their controlled environment.

Start a controlled grow based on "your" ideal conditions. Start a ventilation system so you can control the environment for the benefit of the plants; Be able to divert it or turn it off when your working, for your benefit.

After one generation the diversity will be maximized and the best performing plants will be selected to pass their genes on... and so on... and so on...

Grow and select for whatever traits you're after. Cheers.