If you were hoping to read a diary about Iran's or North Korea's nuclear weapons program (or anyone's nuclear weapons program) move along. This diary will describe some lesser known programs managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Its going to get a little sciencey, so strap in.
One of the unfortunate facts about the world's agribusiness and the Green Revolution spurred by Norman Borlaug, the greatest human who ever lived, is that when farmers find a crop variety that provides high yields or has some other desirable trait they tend to stick with it. Any new hybrids tend to be slight variations from a limited number of closely related varieties with the result that they are all genetically similar. This leads to monoculture, which can lead to big problems. The bananas you buy in the store are almost certainly of the Cavendish variety. It replaced the Gros Michel in the 1950s, a cultivar that succumbed to Panama Disease, a fungus that attacks the roots of the plant. The nature of evolution is that species that stand still will generally get run over eventually, coelacanths and crocodiles not withstanding. It is just a matter of time before the Cavendish's time will be up too. If there are still plenty of wild varieties around, it may be possible to develop hybrids that are resistant to the disease du jur. But not all crops have an extended family to cross with or the wild varieties that do exist may not themselves have the needed resistance or may lack some other desirable trait. That is where mutants come in.
I know the word "mutant" has a certain negative stigma,
but mutations occur naturally. We are the evolutionary culmination of countless mutations over millions of years and look at how we turned out. OK, maybe not the best example. The point is evolution is driven by mutations. Plants are in a perpetual genetic arms race with every mold, rust, and rot out there and for those crops that lack a large gene pool to dip into, induced mutations offer a way to deal a commercially valuable plant a new hand. Well, not literally a new hand. A mutant plant with hands would be weird. Anyway, about the IAEA program...
This is the season that finds kids and kids at heart eating peppermint candy canes and adults spiking their hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Peppermint is a hybrid of spearmint and watermint and for connoisseurs the best peppermint oil comes from a variety known as Black Mitcham, the gold standard since 1750. But Black Mitcham is susceptible to a fungal wilt disease that can wreak minty havoc. Through the magic of induced mutation IAEA has developed varieties of peppermint that, if not immune, have tolerance to wilt that are only slightly different in their taste profile from Black Mitcham. Consequently, most peppermint oil production comes from mutant varieties like Cascade Mitcham, Todd's Mitcham, and Murray Mitcham.
This is also the season for chocolates and commercial cocoa varieties have their own challenges. Cocoa accounts for about 8% of Ghana's GDP and about 60% of its agricultural exports. But Ghana cocoa plants are susceptible to Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus that had been responsible for the destruction of 200 million cocoa plants. IAEA developed mutant cocoa varieties that are resistant to CSSV. As a result, Ghana's cocoa production is rebounding.
I could go on about the 18 varieties of IAEA-developed rice that have an economic impact of about a billion dollars annually, the durum wheat variety resistant to a stem rust that decimated 75% of the US crop in 1954, and other cereals that grow at higher altitudes, or are salt or drought tolerant. The point is the IAEA mutant plant program has touched all our lives in ways you probably never imagined.
Aliens
As anyone who has read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel knows, the easiest way to conquer an aboriginal people is to infect them with the diseases you have already developed immunities to, let the diseases spread like wildfire, and then dominate the 5% or so that are left. A similar concept applies to plants which are in perpetual competition with insects that want to eat them. The plants evolve to divert some of the energy that would have gone into seed production to making toxins or some other defense, the insects develop a certain tolerance for the toxins, but at a reproductive cost of its own, and a balance is established. Now imagine that somebody plucks that plant out of the ground and ships it halfway around the world to some landscaping company, along with a couple little hungry stowaways. Well, the original plant still tastes as yucky to the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, or whatever the particular pest may be, but now it may have a whole host of new plants to chose from that are very tasty but never had to deal with them before. The fruit trees are like the birds who evolved on South Pacific islands without knowing predators and who fearlessly walked up to the first human arrivals like feathery shmoos. From the Fruit Fly's perspective, they are in heaven. From the orchard grower's perspective, life threatens to become hellish. Insecticides can help keep the invaders in check, artificially doing what a plant would have figured out more or less how to do on its own given enough time (and at a metabolic cost in fruit production). But insects evolve too and will grow tolerant of the chemical warfare after awhile. That is where IAEA comes in to save the day. It is done using radiation. There I said it. RADIATION. Go on, get it out of your system. I'll wait.
What IAEA does is grow legions of the pest in question (preferably only the males) and then zaps them with enough radiation to sterilize them but not enough to kill them, hence the name Sterile Insect Technique or SIT. They are then released to carpet bomb the infected area. The result is a high boy-fly to girl-fly ratio. The sterilized males don't know they are sterile and will still do what male flies do, such as ask the girl-flies to dance and maybe play a little hootchie coochie. The she-fly won't know her suitor is shooting blanks either and will lay infertile eggs. If the ratio is large enough, the 'real' male flies will have so much competition their chances of finding a date will be next to nothing. The population of the unwanted invaders will then collapse. You may remember hearing about Mediterranean Fruit Fly infestations in California and Florida years ago. It was SIT that delivered the knockout blows and is the reason you don't hear about them in the news so much anymore.
IAEA does lots of things besides inspecting, attempting to inspect, rogue nuclear programs. They really are unsung heroes in ways most of us would never guess.