Question

Can gamma rays used for crop improvement programmes prove to be harmful for health? Discuss.

Answer 1

No Radiation treatment has been used to create thousands of new plant varieties, these varieties are cultivated as food and feed Radiation is known to be much more disruptive for chromosomal structure than manipulations used to make transgenic plants.

Such radiation treatment of crop plants has caused no documented instances of ill-health among consumers despite having been used commercially for several decades, for rice crops alone hundreds of different mutant varieties have been developed mostly made by using ionisiing radiations, like gamma rays.