North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

My 2 cents :  During the anthrax event on the east coast, when mail was 
being irradiated as a precaution agin' that bug, the seed testing industry 
ran some germination tests on seed samples which had been irradiated by the 
mail system.   Zero percent germination.

tc


----Original Message Follows----
From: Rob Halgren <halgren@msu.edu>
Reply-To: halgren@msu.edu,North American Fruit Explorers 
<nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] Re: nafex Digest, Vol 11, Issue 27
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 10:38:31 -0500

> > I don't think any "fresh produce" can be irradiated - that would kill
> > the cells, and it wouldn't keep.

I think it is all a matter of dose and time.  There is a dose which would 
destroy bacteria and virus, and probably beat the heck out of the fruit's 
DNA, but not result in damage to the cells themselves. Remember, in a ripe 
fruit the plant's cells are no longer dividing, they have done all the work 
they are going to do. So if you muck up their DNA, nobody cares and the 
mechanisms that induce cell death in response to DNA damage probably won't 
be invoked.

Since bacteria continue to divide and prosper after fruit ripening, they are 
most susceptible to radiation damage.  Hence, the right dose would kill 
bacteria, but might not affect fruit (vegetable) quality.

And, as everybody knows, irradiation doesn't make food radioactive... Just 
had to put that out there.  I used to irradiate blood for transfusions...  
So if we can irradiate blood and have it still be useful, one presumes we 
can do that with other complex tissues (like green onions).

Rob  (misses green onions at restaurants)
--
Robert G. Halgren, Ph.D.
Bioinformatics Specialist
GTSF - Michigan State University
http://genomics.msu.edu
(517) 353-7236    -   halgren@msu.edu

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