19^th International CODATA Conference
Category: Data Visualization

Application of Radiation and Radioisotopes in Agricultural Science

Tomoko M. Nakanishi
Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Radiation and Radioisotopes have been played an important role in the wide range of agrucultral science, from the field study, such as fertilizer or pesticide development　or production of new species, to gene engineering researches.  Many mutants through radiation have been introduced to the market, such as rice, soybean, pear plant etc., and the usage of radioactive tracers was an effective tool to study plant physiology.  The development of the devices to measure radiation has also been supported the tracer researches.  It has been granted that the contribution of radioisotopes has been accelerated the development of the gene engineering technology, which is now overwhelming all the other usages of radiation or radioisotopes.  However, because of the difficulty to get social acceptance for gene modified plants, the orientation of the agricultural, i.e. life science is now changing towards, so called “post genome era”.  Therefore, from the point of radiation or radioisotope usage, new application methods are needed to develop new type of researches.  I would like to present how (1) neutron activation analysis, (2) neutron radiography and (3) positron emission tomography are promising to study living plant physiology.  Some of these techniques are not necessarily new methods but with a little modification, they show new aspects of plant activity.  To understand the living plant itself, not the dead plants, is expected to open new research field not only in agriculture but also in the wide range of life science.