How Does Radiation Affect Farm Animals? 22 What Else Can Radiation Tell Us? 22 CONCLUSION 23 SUGGESTED REFERENCES 24 United States Atomic Energy Commission Division of Technical Information Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-60274 1962; 1963(Rev.) ABOUT THE AUTHOR Thomas S. Osborne is in charge of plant-breeding research being conducted by the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Research Laboratory for the Atomic Energy Commission. He has been in this work since 1953. But Dr. Osborne is a teacher at heart. Hence when students wrote inquiring about the effects of radiation on seeds, he took great interest in replying. From these replies grew mimeographed literature suggesting experiments for students; then this and other booklets. Dr. Osborne received his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University and his doctorate from Washington State University. Atoms in Agriculture by Thomas S. Osborne, Associate Professor of Agronomy, University of Tennessee. _To know what questions to put to Nature—that is 95 per cent of scientific research._ —Whitehead If man’s existence on the earth is compared to a calendar year, then he began farming in the very early morning of December 30 and began applying systematic knowledge to agriculture at 10:15 p.m. on December 31. The first traces of man on the earth are dated at about one and three-quarter million years ago. Plant life then was very much like plant life today, but the animal population was quite different. Man became a producer of plants and animals instead of merely a gatherer and hunter about 8000 years ago. He has applied systematic study to cultivated plants and animals for only 300 years. Research in the United States Estimates of crop losses in the United States each year are approximately $5 billion to weeds, $4 billion to insects, and $3 billion to diseases. This total loss of $12 billion a year is about $22,500 a minute. In an effort to reduce these losses and to raise the standard of living, agricultural research has become more specialized and more complex. Over the years it has gradually changed from trial-and-error attempts to increase production to the actual study of basic questions. To study such intricate systems as the leaf of a plant or the liver of an animal, agricultural science has had to draw from every other science. The use of radioactive tracers and radiations in research looks especially promising to agriculture.