this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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Read up on gamma gardens, they were a thing back in the atomic age.
The concept is super simple, you irradiate seeds or plants and see what happens.
Does the seeds grow, do they have new mutations, are the mutations able to reproduce?
If yes, cool you now have a new species of plant.
This is how we got pink grapefruit.
This is still how you get new strain of crops. Gamma radiation or chemical mutagens to create a bunch of mutations randomly and then selected based on which of the resulting plants you like. China even sends seeds to space to be irradiated by cosmic radiation, but I don't really see how it could be better.
The funny part is that since we did it for decades, nobody cares that you have virtually no control over what you do and that you introduce many unknown mutations with no knowledge of what they do. But if you try to introduce a specific, well-targeted mutations with modern tools, some people just go crazy.
natural organic space radiation, don't give me that artificial toxic radiation
They still do basically the same with hard UV in agricultural.