Superhero Barley

The International Atomic Energy Authority have released some new videos to their YouTube channel that may interest botanists. The most relevant video is The Birth of Centenario. This is about the breeding of a new strain of barley for the Andean highlands. The video shows how cross-breeding from mutant plants bombarded with radiation has produced a new strain of barley capable of feeding humans in the highlands of Peru.

The other videos are More Food with Better Soil and Food for the Future. These join classics like Better Fruit with Nuclear Technology.

I’m going to have a happy evening browsing the IAEA’s video channel.

About Alun Salt

When he's not the web developer for AoB Blog, Alun Salt researches something that could be mistaken for the archaeology of science. His current research is about whether there's such a thing as scientific heritage and if there is how would you recognise it?