Evolution Made to Order

Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America

Helen Anne Curry (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

295 Seiten

2021
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-79086-2 (ISBN)

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Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product.

In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.

Helen Anne Curry is the Peter Lipton Lecturer in History of Modern Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part 1   Evolution by X-ray: The Industrialization of Biological Innovation

1          Mutation Theories
2          An Unsolved Problem
3          Speeding Up Evolution
4          X-rays in the Lab and Field
5          Industrial Evolution

Part 2   Tinkering with Chromosomes: Colchicine in the Lab and Garden

6          Artificial Tetraploidy
7          Evolution to Order
8          Better Evolution through Chemistry
9          Tinkering Technologists
10        The Flower Manufacturers

Part 3   Atoms for Agriculture: Evolution in a Large Technological System

11        Radiation Revisited
12        Mutation Politics
13        An Atomic-Age Experiment Station
14        Atomic Gardens
15        The Peaceful Atom in Global Agriculture

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	07.07.2021
Zusatzinfo	29 halftones
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	399 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Botanik
ISBN-10	0-226-79086-X / 022679086X
ISBN-13	978-0-226-79086-2 / 9780226790862
Zustand	Neuware