Different kinds of Isotopes are playing very important roles in agriculture. They are used to detect different nutrient elements in soil and other crop improvement program. But which isotopes and how can they preserve agricultural products?
Food irradiation is the process of exposing foodstuffs to gamma rays to kill bacteria that can cause food-borne disease, and to increase shelf-life. It has the same benefits as when food is heated, refrigerated, frozen, or treated with chemicals, but does not change the temperature or leave residues. In all parts of the world there is growing use of irradiation technology to preserve food. More than 60 countries worldwide have introduced regulations allowing the use of irradiation for food products including spices, grains, fruit, vegetables, and meat. It can replace potentially harmful chemical fumigants that are used to eliminate insects from dried fruit and grain, legumes, and spices. Radioisotopes are used as a research tool to develop new strains of agricultural crops that are drought and disease resistant, are of higher quality, have shorter growing time and produce a higher yield. Ionizing radiation is very useful for preservation of agricultural and food products.
cobalt-60 is used to control the spoilage in stored grains pests. .
The advantages of this method is that there is no danger of residual toxicity. The perishable foodstuffs such as fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and fish are particularly subject to spoilage in distribution and storage .The radiation destroy not only the live insects but their eggs and pupae also.
Fertilizers labelled with radioactive isotopes such as phosphorus-32 and nitrogen-15 have been used to study the uptake, retention and utilization of fertilizers. Excessive use of fertilizers effects biodiversity and damages the environment.
Cobalt-60 is desirable because: It is easily made by irradiating normal cobalt in a research nuclear reactor or a power reactor. Cobalt itself is cheap. It has two high energy gamma rays that can penetrate the entire lot of food.
How does Food Irradiation work? Food is exposed to a carefully measured amount of intense ionizing radiation. With food irradiation, radiant energy (electrons, gamma rays, or x-rays) breaks chemical bonds, leaving the food still like-fresh, but with specific benefits, depending on treatment level.
One of the most important radioactive isotopes is isotope of phosphorous and sulfur at known rates
Sprout inhibition of onions
Low-dose irradiation with cobalt-60 (40 to 100 Gy) effectively controls the germination of bulbs such as onions. Onions treated (right) don’t show any sign of germination like their non treated counterparts (left)...
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