REVIEWS
“Curry recovers a neglected history of biotechnology with verve and vivid detail. Decades before recombinant DNA, eager breeders and horticulturalists exploited mutant-generating techniques from chemistry and nuclear energy to improve crops and ornamental plants. As she shows, GMOs are only the latest chapter of ‘evolution to order’ in agriculture.”
— Angela N. H. Creager, Princeton University
“This well-written book is in part a contribution to the history of plant breeding. But more than that, it is a study of ‘technological utopianism’: the fervent belief that new methods of inducing mutation could transform breeding and thus boost the agricultural economy. Of particular interest is Curry’s demonstration that although the new technology was a failure from the breeders’ point of view, it nonetheless retained widespread support from a range of extrascientific organizations—seed companies, industrial firms, government agencies—who perceived it as a solution to their own quite different problems.”
— Jonathan Harwood, Kings College London
“Early and mid-twentieth-century geneticists and plant breeders dreamed of finding ways to speed up evolution. Evolution Made to Order uses a diverse set of sources, ranging from archives and newspapers to seed catalogs, to explore how and why American researchers hoped to use radiation to produce new commercial plant varieties. Curry’s innovative approach to the history of biotechnology deserves a wide audience among historians of science, technology, and medicine.”
— Audra Wolfe, author of Competing with the Soviets
“Curry offers a fascinating historical journey through the American scientific and social worlds of induced-mutation work. Through extensive research, she convincingly establishes that biologists’ obsession with plant mutation breeding did not begin with molecular biology and recombinant DNA but, rather, with the tools of chemical mutagenesis and radiobiology. Her lively account resurrects unknown actors, important institutional contexts, and forgotten cultural fads, and her thoughtful consideration of the successes and failures of their collective scientific endeavors provides some much-needed historical context for current ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering. Evolution Made to Order is a narrative account that is both accessible and scholarly. It makes an important contribution to the historiographies of biology and technology, and treats with appropriate parity the roles of its scientific and amateur historical actors. It is, in a word, brilliant.”
— Karen Rader, Virginia Commonwealth University
"A fascinating foray into a mutated cornucopia of agricultural and horticultural products and the tools that made them. Such varied and important insights into the history of biological innovation and its many aspirations seem as relevant as ever in our ongoing search for new tools to reshape living things to our goals, needs, and desires—and to envision life as it could be."
— Science
"In this fascinating, well-researched history of genetic innovation, Curry explores the hype, intensive investigation, and, ultimately, the disappointment accompanying the application of new technologies offering the promise of human control over plant evolution to breed superior agricultural and horticultural crops in the early to mid-20th century. The utilization of these tools for plant breeding is placed in the broader context of innovations in the electromechanical, chemical, and nuclear industries and the desire to control living organisms in a manner similar to any other industrial product. Certain historical events, such as America’s entry into World War II and the subsequent desire for national self-sufficiency that developed, helped fuel the hope that these technologies could deliver the necessary genetic advances, despite the available evidence to the contrary. Fascinating and entertaining throughout, this historical account of genetic technological innovation helps provide context for discussion over current, and by every measure much more successful, genetic engineering technologies utilized for plant improvement and the societal, ethical, and ecological questions surrounding them. Highly recommended."
— Choice
"In her book Evolution Made to Order, Curry elucidates three major innovations in American plant breeding techniques during the 20th century—the use of X-rays, colchicine, and radioisotopes to bring about mutations and speed up evolution. Along the way, she introduces us to important plant breeders and scientists, including Albert Blakeslee, David Burpee, Bernard Nebel, Mable Ruttle, Arnold Sparrow, Lewis Stadler, Ralph Singleton, and others who strove to feed the world."
— Quarterly Review of Biology
"Curry’s history is well researched, well written, clear, and subtle.... She does us a service by taking 'failures' seriously. The bias toward studying successes blinds us to the alternative paths that seemed just as realistic, in their time and place, as the eventual successes. We need more studies of scientific and technological dead ends if we are to gain a full understanding of the ways scientists and engineers tried to change the world at any given time."
— Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
"Curry’s clear and appealing writing, and her layered analysis, make this a wonderful and important book."
— Annals of Science
"Curry’s book is a clearly written and original history charting the activities of Americans who developed tools designed to manipulate genes and chromosomes in the early to mid-twentieth century. She focuses on three technologies: use of X-rays, chemical manipulation, and gamma radiation. These stories illustrate how readily scientists and the American public exploited new technologies as they became available, always with the hope of speeding up and controlling evolution."
— Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
"Curry identifies several cross-cutting themes that strengthen her argument for a shared technological and industrial vision. . . . Throughout the book Curry raises key questions and builds important arguments, to which she returns in a suggestive Epilogue, about the overarching industrial values (to which I would add corporate values) that dominated the context of doing science in the twentieth century. She demonstrates the very real overlap of scientific, commercial, and industrial practices, and what might be called an obsession with prediction and control extending from the management of industrial processes to the management of life."
— Journal of the History of Biology
"Providing compelling perspectives on consumerism, marketing, and the everyday roles of technology and science in the United States in the twentieth century, [Curry's] study tracks efforts to produce mutations in plants. . . . As a study of the marketing of scientific promise, this book is filled with rich details and wonderful illustrations of the exuberance."
— Journal of American History
"Informative, engaging, and entertaining. This book will already be familiar to historians of technology and science with an interest in agriculture—who will be repaid by a return to the volume and its evergreen themes. Generalists and specialists in other areas should take note of this fine model of scholarship with broad relevance. It also deserves the attention of readers with wider interests in technology, amateur and professional science, and science and technology policy. This is exactly the kind of well-reasoned and clearly written analysis that one hopes policymakers or anyone seeking to employ technology should be reading in producing solutions to the problems of food in the future. . . . This volume remains relevant and timely at least in part because of its richness—which this review can hardly capture—of analysis and exposition in thinking about plants and their co-evolved humans."
— Technology and Culture
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0001
[agriculture;biotechnology;evolution;genetics;genetic technologies;history of technology;technological innovation;plant breeding]
The introduction outlines the aims of the book and situates it within the histories of plant breeding, genetics, and biotechnology, American agriculture, and technological innovation. It explains why plant breeders were eager to find tools that would allow them to “speed up evolution” by generating heritable variation on demand and advances the argument that breeders’ pursuit of these tools cannot be understood apart from the broader history of technological innovation in the twentieth century. It further suggests that the account of genetic technologies provided in the book offers a new perspective on the history of biotechnologies. It reveals not only their entanglement with other areas of industrial production and innovation but also the role played in their development by many Americans who believed in the transformative power of genetics and clamored for technologies that would grant control over the heredity and evolution of living organisms. (pages 1 - 12)
This chapter is available at:
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1: Mutation Theories - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0002
[Hugo de Vries;Daniel MacDougal;Luther Burbank;Oenothera lamarckiana;mutation theory;radium]
This chapter introduces two individuals whose ideas about plant breeding, especially the production of novel traits and types, strongly influenced American breeders in the early twentieth century. In his mutation theory of evolution, the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries maintained that new species arose not from slight variations in traits selected upon over many generations but instead from abrupt and distinct alterations in form that separated offspring from their parents in a single generation. This theory emerged in part from de Vries’s observations of such alterations—which he called mutations—in the flowering plant Oenothera lamarckiana. He subsequently encouraged fellow biologists to search for means of producing mutations at will, not least to bring the process of plant breeding under greater control. Meanwhile, the Californian plant breeder and horticultural entrepreneur Luther Burbank claimed to already possess such control, offering his many novel flower and fruit varieties as evidence. De Vries publically disputed Burbank’s claims. His insistence on the imperative to discover means of inducing mutations inspired a number of biologists in their research. These included the botanist Daniel MacDougal, who subjected Oenothera plants to chemical injections and radium rays and soon claimed to have produced mutations as a result. (pages 17 - 26)
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2: An Unsolved Problem - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0003
[induced mutation;genetics;Drosophila melanogaster;Zea mays;James Mavor;Lewis Stadler;Thomas Harper Goodspeed;Axel Olson;Nicotiana tabacum;x-ray]
This chapter describes the attention given to mutation—a term increasingly used to designate an observed change in a single characteristic inherited in a typical Mendelian pattern—within the burgeoning field of experimental genetics in the 1910s and 1920s. It charts the work of several biologists whose research linked x-ray exposure to the appearance of new heritable variations and eventually to induced mutation. In the early 1920s, the biologist James Mavor demonstrated that x-ray irradiation of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster sometimes led to the production of genetic irregularities such as chromosome aberrations. Shortly thereafter, the geneticist Lewis Stadler began a research program designed to demonstrate similar effects in Zea mays, the maize (corn) plant. Stadler’s experiments led him to the investigation of yet another apparent effect of x-ray irradiation: the production of mutations. Yet he was not the only experimenter who aimed to pin down evidence of such an effect. The botanist Thomas Harper Goodspeed and chemist Axel Olson independently began x-ray experimentation in January 1927, hoping to discover the effect of induced mutation in Nicotiana tabacum, the tobacco plant. Both Stadler and Goodspeed and Olson would be beaten to the announcement of their results by still another researcher. (pages 27 - 37)
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3: Speeding Up Evolution - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0004
[Hermann Muller;Drosophila melanogaster;x-ray;industrialization;evolution;induced mutation]
In July 1927 the geneticist Hermann Muller announced the results of a series of experiments in which he claimed to have induced mutations in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster by exposing the flies to x-rays. This chapter briefly recounts the history of Muller’s induced mutation experiments before exploring the ways in which these experiments—as well as those conducted by Stadler and Goodspeed and Olson—were subsequently discussed in the scientific and popular press. The celebratory coverage of x-ray research in the late 1920s and early 1930s cast biologists and breeders as having achieved unprecedented control over the form and evolution of living things, control that would soon produce dramatic changes in agricultural production and might also address concerns about eugenic improvement and spur industrial progress. A typical characterization of x-ray induced mutation described it as “speeding up evolution,” an outcome that would make plant breeding as efficient and rational as industrialization had made the production of manufactured goods. Such expectations fueled further research and experimentation. (pages 38 - 50)
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4: X-rays in the Lab and Field - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0005
[Committee on Effects of Radiation upon Living Organisms;University of Missouri;University of California Berkeley;cotton breeding;flower breeding;x-ray]
Speculation about the uses of induced mutations in genetics research as well as in practical plant breeding spurred significant biological experimentation with x-rays in the 1920s and 1930s. As this chapter describes, these studies aimed at both elucidating the nature of induced mutation and producing improved crops and flowers. One significant supporter of such research was the Committee on Effects of Radiation upon Living Organisms, convened from 1928 to 1934 under the auspices of the U.S. National Research Council. This committee provided funds for investigations into the biological effects of radiation exposure to many American researchers. The sites where investigation of induced mutation had first taken place continued to be central to this domain of inquiry: at the University of Missouri, Lewis Stadler spearheaded investigations into various aspects of mutation in maize, while at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers at the Genetics Department and Agricultural Experiment Station considered the effects of radiation on a vast array of organisms. Many of these experimenters, whether associated with cotton breeding programs at public institutions or heading up commercial flower breeding operations, hoped to produce the improved agricultural and horticultural products promised in scientific and popular accounts. (pages 51 - 61)
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5: Industrial Evolution - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0006
[Caryl Haskins;Chester Moore;General Electric Research Laboratory;x-ray;industrial research;biological innovation;technological innovation;industrialization]
This chapter, which concludes Part 1, argues that efforts to transform x-ray technologies into tools of plant breeding can be understood as efforts to industrialize the process of biological innovation much as other areas of technological innovation had been earlier in the century. This is illustrated through the example of a 1930s experimental program at the General Electric Research Laboratory that endeavored both to understand the nature of x-ray induced changes in living organisms and to demonstrate the potential for induced mutation in agricultural and horticultural production. Two General Electric employees, Caryl Haskins and Chester Moore, conducted experiments on a wide range of plant species with the aim of establishing a generalized method by which new traits and types could be produced through x-ray exposure. Their ambitions for introducing greater efficiency into biological innovation mirrored the aims of the industrial research laboratory as a whole, which had been conceived as a place for the efficient, regularized production of innovations. The chapter concludes with a short review of the many factors that contributed to the enthusiasm for plant breeding with x-rays in the 1920s and 1930s. (pages 62 - 76)
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6: Artificial Tetraploidy - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0007
[John Belling;Station for Experimental Evolution;cytology;cytogenetics;Albert Blakeslee;chromosomal mutation;chromosome doubling]
This chapter, which opens Part 2, explains the longstanding interest of plant biologists in the phenomenon of chromosome doubling and charts their earliest efforts to find a tool that would produce such doubling on demand. As early as 1907 cytological studies demonstrated that plants occasionally produced offspring having more or fewer chromosomes than typical representatives of the species. Subsequent studies revealed consistent differences in chromosome number among closely related plant species and among various agricultural crop varieties. Soon many biologists came to consider loss or accumulation of chromosomes to be a distinct mechanism through which plant speciation could occur and a potentially useful technique for agricultural and horticultural breeding. Of the many biologists engaged in this area of research in the 1920s, two are given particular attention here: the geneticist Albert Blakeslee and the cytologist John Belling of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor. Their cytogenetic analyses of many unusual variants of the plant Datura stramonium placed them at the forefront of theorizing about the role of chromosome doubling and other chromosomal mutations in evolution and heredity as well as the potential uses of induced chromosome doubling in plant breeding. (pages 81 - 92)
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7: Evolution to Order - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0008
[colchicine;Albert Blakeslee;chromosome doubling;Bernard Nebel;Mabel Ruttle;Orie Eigsti;Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Genetics;New York State Agricultural Experiment Station]
Although geneticists and breeders by the mid-1930s accepted that the ability to induce chromosome doubling was of immense consequence, a reliable method remained elusive. This was the status quo until 1937, when several researchers, including Albert Blakeslee and Orie Eigsti of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Genetics (formerly the Station for Experimental Evolution) and Bernard Nebel and Mabel Ruttle of the New York State Agricultural Experiment station learned of the disruptive effects of a plant hormone called colchicine on cell mitoses. This chapter details their and other scientists’ subsequent pioneering of colchicine as a chemical tool for doubling the chromosomes of plants. After decades of tinkering with various unwieldy and unreliable methods of chromosome manipulation, colchicine seemed remarkably easy and precise: it was readily available and affordable, appeared to double chromosomes consistently, and could be applied in many ways to alter a remarkable range of species. It quickly became the object of fascination among both scientists and a broader public audience, not least for the promise it held as a tool of plant breeding. With colchicine, it seemed possible to turn out new crops via a method more precise and controlled than any previously available. (pages 93 - 107)
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8: Better Evolution through Chemistry - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0009
[colchicine;chromosome doubling;evolution;chemical industry;World War II]
The sweeping statements made about colchicine led to an avalanche of research on induced chromosome doubling, especially in economic crops. Americans’ enthusiasm for experimentation with colchicine lasted well into the 1940s. This chapter explores the reasons for this widespread interest. A decade earlier the use of x-rays to produce mutations had sparked myriad claims about the ability of scientists to control evolution and engineer new organisms to order, but the attention to colchicine easily redoubled these. In replicating an important evolutionary process, the chemical was thought to accelerate the production of valuable heritable variation. More important, colchicine seemed to alter chromosomes in predictable ways, enabling plant breeders to produce new varieties according to preconceived plans. In the press, colchicine was heralded as the "evolution accelerator," a tool that would enable plant breeders "to turn out newly created forms on the production line" much as the chemical industries and other industrial manufacturers already did. And this newfound ability—to turn out plants on the production line—was taken as an indication that plant breeders would play their part in producing the goods that would keep Americans strong in the midst of World War II and comfortable in the post-war world. (pages 108 - 118)
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9: Tinkering Technologists - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0010
[amateurs;tinkering;leisure;gardening;colchicine]
Part of the appeal of colchicine to Americans of the 1940s was that it seemed so easy to use. Reports described the simplicity of the methods involved and referred to colchicine as a shortcut compared to older modes of plant breeding. As this chapter describes, exaggerated reports of spray-on plant improvement encouraged the pursuit of colchicine research by many enthusiastic amateurs who hoped to direct a cutting-edge tool of genetics to their own purposes. Such amateurs sometimes aimed to produce an improved plant, whether for pleasure or profit, but in other cases wanted simply to explore the effects of colchicine for themselves. The extent to which amateurs extended the use of colchicine beyond what professionals had envisioned is best illustrated by the efforts of some to discredit the idea that plant breeding with colchicine was suitable for untrained experimenters and home gardeners. Still, despite these warnings and the actual challenges involved in producing something useful, many amateurs tinkered on. In doing so, they created a space in which colchicine did not need to be a technology for precision breeding but simply a tool to experiment in the garden or to create unusual plants as a leisure time activity. (pages 119 - 129)
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10: The Flower Manufacturers - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0011
[W. Atlee Burpee & Co.;David Burpee;colchicine;tetraploid;flower breeding;tinkering]
This chapter, which concludes Part 2, argues that although many researchers saw colchicine as a way to avoid tinkering in the innovation of both breeding methods and plant varieties, its more immediate and enduring appeal was in its enabling these selfsame tinkering activities. This is illustrated in the uses made of colchicine at W. Atlee Burpee & Co. seed company under the direction of its president David Burpee. Burpee breeders did not rely on colchicine solely as a tool for generating specific chromosomal alterations. The chemical more often took its place among a suite of agents, including x-rays, chemicals, and radioisotopes, used to generate random genetic changes. Just as researchers had long tinkered with experimental methods of inducing chromosome doubling, Burpee breeders tinkered with the methods of colchicine application to find out what approaches would work best on their many plant varieties. They also used colchicine to tinker with the hereditary material of plants, trying to produce new arrangements and combinations and therefore novel varieties of garden flowers. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the importance of differentiating among different users in understanding the history of colchicine experimentation and the aspirations for plant breeding it entailed. (pages 130 - 140)
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11: Radiation Revisited - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0012
[Brookhaven National Laboratory;gamma radiation;gamma field;nuclear energy;US Atomic Energy Commission;technopolitics;large technological system;W. Ralph Singleton;Arnold Sparrow;radioisotope]
After World War II, the increased availability of radioisotopes, nuclear reactors, and other radiation-generating technologies associated with the production and study of nuclear energy—and the willingness of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to fund research relying on these technologies—generated renewed interest in radiation-induced mutation as a means of plant breeding. This chapter, the first of Part 3, introduces several biologists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory as key actors in this revival. In the late 1940s, the geneticist W. Ralph Singleton and the cytologist Arnold Sparrow along with other members of the Brookhaven Biology Department began exploring new experimental tools for investigating the effects of radiation on plants. One such tool was a “gamma field” where growing plants were continuously exposed to gamma radiation emitted by the radioisotope cobalt-60. This and other irradiation facilities would by the early 1950s be advanced as tools of potential interest to plant breeders, an agenda that aligned well with the Atomic Energy Commission’s interest in promoting so-called peaceful uses of atomic energy. The chapter also introduces “large technological systems” and “technopolitics” as concepts that help to explain the flourishing of the Brookhaven radiation-induced mutation research program and subsequent resurgent interest in mutation breeding. (pages 145 - 155)
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12: Mutation Politics
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0013
[mutation breeding;Brookhaven National Laboratory;US Atomic Energy Commission;nuclear fallout;atomic radiation;Atoms for Peace;technopolitics;large technological system;cooperative research]
This chapter further elaborates on subjects introduced in the preceding chapter, considering in greater detail political aspects of mutation research at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1953, Brookhaven launched a formal cooperative research initiative that brought together its nuclear technologies and the expertise of agriculturalists stationed elsewhere explicitly to evaluate potential uses of radiation-induced mutation in plant breeding. This chapter suggests that the cooperative program and the ensuing renewed interest of Americans in mutation breeding are best understood as by-products of the large and growing technological system dedicated to U.S. atomic development. Within that system, the use of nuclear technologies in plant breeding satisfied multiple political needs. For one, it demonstrated the potential non-military benefits of atomic research and development, an outcome that became increasingly important as the U.S. government and Atomic Energy Commission pursued “Atoms for Peace” as an international program after 1953. In addition, successes in mutation breeding promised to counterbalance widespread concern about the harmful effects of atomic radiation and nuclear fallout on plants, animals, and especially humans. As awareness of the dangers of radiation exposure mounted in the postwar years, some plant breeders counter-claimed that radiation-induced mutation would prove beneficial, not least in improving important crops.
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13: An Atomic-Age Experiment Station - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0014
[agricultural experiment station;Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station;agricultural research;Oak Ridge National Laboratory;University of Tennessee–Atomic Energy Commission Agricultural Research Laboratory;cooperative research;Thomas Osborne]
In 1948 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station jointly agreed to the creation of a novel research institution on the grounds of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory: an agricultural experiment station where researchers would consider the effects of radiation and fallout on agricultural production and the application of radioisotopes in agricultural research. This University of Tennessee–Atomic Energy Commission Agricultural Research Laboratory and the plant-breeding program established within it in the mid 1950s are the central subjects of this chapter. If looking at the cooperative mutation breeding program at Brookhaven suggests how some areas of agricultural research became embedded in the national system for nuclear research and development, taking a look at UT-AEC Agricultural Research Laboratory reveals how nuclear technologies became embedded in the established U.S. agricultural research system. A key protagonist in this chapter is Thomas Osborne, who was hired in 1954 to head up research into induced mutation, including their use in breeding important Tennessee crops, and who oversaw both an expansion in the radiation facilities of the laboratory and the creation of a cooperative research program along the lines of the program established earlier at Brookhaven. (pages 166 - 176)
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14: Atomic Gardens - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0015
[seed company;irradiated seed;Clarence Speas;Oak Ridge Atomic Industries;amateurs;gardening;atomic gardens;nuclear energy]
Amidst the growing discussion of atomic-aided agriculture, a few commercial seed companies began investigating the uses of atomic technologies in their own research and marketing. This chapter explores the most successful innovation in this domain: the sale of irradiated flower and vegetable seeds to home gardeners. These “atomic-energized” seeds were touted by entrepreneurs such as Clarence Speas of Oak Ridge Atom Industries as likely to throw off new, unusual, and potentially profitable mutations. The seeds proved popular among many American home gardeners and other amateur experimenters in the early 1960s. As with colchicine tinkerers, these individuals were keen to explore the uses of new technologies for themselves and possibly to produce novel flowers and vegetables. Yet those wanting to experiment with nuclear energy were also dependent on professional scientists and the developing infrastructure for nuclear research. As this chapter describes, "atomic gardens" were tied up in the same technological system as the Brookhaven gamma field and other plant irradiation facilities. They relied on the same nuclear research infrastructure and government sale of radioisotopes. In this sense, "atomic gardens" were another cog in the larger machine of American atomic production—or, at the very least, an unexpected output. (pages 177 - 190)
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15: The Peaceful Atom in Global Agriculture - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0016
[mutation breeding;nuclear energy;International Atomic Energy Agency;International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy;large technological system;technopolitics;Cold War]
The 1950s saw the development of an international atomic infrastructure. Within this system, American atomic technologies—including those associated with mutation breeding—were explicitly the object of technopolitics. This chapter, which concludes Part 3, follows the promotion of mutation breeding outwards from the atomic laboratories of the United States into an international arena. It argues that while the re-emergence of interest in the use of radiation in plant breeding depended on the growth of a large technological system dedicated to the development of nuclear energy in the United States, its continuance depended on the global extension of that system. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and later the International Atomic Energy Agency cultivated interest in mutation breeding, especially that which relied on nuclear technologies, at events such as the International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy and through the provision of financial and material resources to diverse institutions. They enabled the spread of these nuclear-derived plant-breeding technologies, especially as part of a development agenda, even as breeders in the United States became increasingly disaffected with them. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the role of Cold War politics and the exigencies of atomic development in the continuance of mutation breeding. (pages 191 - 204)
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Epilogue - Helen Anne Curry
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226390116.003.0017
[transgenics;mutagenics;genetic engineering;genetically modified crop;genetic technologies]
Americans have long imagined the existence of an easy route to innovating living things, especially the plants that underpin American agricultural production. As the epilogue reiterates, that route has been largely indistinguishable from other areas of innovation, no matter how special we may perceive its object to have been. In addition to summarizing this and other key arguments advanced in the book, the epilogue looks forward to the period from 1970 to 2015 and suggests how the histories of early genetic technologies such as x-rays, colchicine, and atomic radiation might inform the more recent and better-charted history of transgenic manipulation (what we know today as genetic engineering) and contemporary controversies over genetically modified crops. It describes the changed cultural context of the 1970s into which transgenic manipulation emerged as a new technology and explores the similarities and differences between its reception and that of mutagenic techniques in earlier decades. It concludes with a reminder that evidence of broad acceptance of genetic technologies from the 1930s through the 1960s does not mean that twenty-first-century disapproval of these is misguided. Rather, it indicates that many Americans have come to a different understanding of genetic technologies and the implications of their use. (pages 205 - 216)
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