Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?

Re:Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutriti... by Symmetry on Monday March 05, 2018 @10:13AM (#16521535)

It's totally true. Efforts to produce shorter stemmed wheat that were also resistant to rust[1] used induced mutations from x-rays in some cases. So if you feel like you want wheat that's been mutated to be a good crop via good old fashioned solar UV rays rather than scary artificial cyclotron x-rays you should look for heirloom crops rather than organics.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_leaf_rust

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Re:Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutriti... by codeulike on Monday March 05, 2018 @11:12AM (#16521958)

The article you quote describes how resistance came about via selective breeding and other such mundane techniques and makes no mention of x-rays. Comment above mine was specifically saying that radiation based mutation is widespread in organic agriculture.

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Re:Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutriti... by Symmetry on Monday March 05, 2018 @11:23AM (#16522061)

Sorry, I just put in the link because I figured people might be confused by me saying "rust" without it. I'm basing my comments on reading The Wizard and the Prophet which gets into the nuts and bolts of the Green Revolution and the various research programs involved. I don't have an online source on hand better than what either of us could Google.

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