評論
打印
Science and technology.
科技。
Salt-tolerant rice.
耐鹽大米。
Nuclear-powered crops.
核動力糧食。
Physics meets biology in a project to breed better strains of rice.
物理學與生物學的碰撞--優質大米培植。
THOSE who turn their noses up at "genetically modified" food seldom seem to consider that all crops are genetically modified. The difference between a wild plant and one that serves some human end is a lot of selective breeding-the picking and combining over the years of mutations that result in bigger seeds, tastier fruit or whatever else is required.
對轉基因食物不屑一顧的人似乎忽視了一個事實：所有糧食都屬于轉基因食物。野生植物與供人食用的植物之間的不同之處在于后者經過了層層篩選和培植，也就是經過多年的突變，將優良品相進行選擇并組合，以培育出更大的種子，更甜的果實，或者人類需要的其他結果。
Nor, these days, are those mutations there by accident. They are, rather, deliberately induced, usually by exposing seeds to radiation. And that is exactly what Tomoko Abe and her colleagues at the Riken Nishina Centre for Accelerator-Based Science in Saitama, outside Tokyo, are doing with rice. The difference is that Dr Abe is not using namby-pamby X-rays and gamma rays to mutate her crop, as is the way in most other countries. Instead she is sticking them in a particle accelerator and bombarding them with heavy ions-large atoms that have been stripped down to their nuclei by the removal of their electrons. This produces between ten and 100 times as many mutations as the traditional method, and thus increases the chances of blundering across some useful ones.
這些年的變異并非自然發生，而是常常通過將種子暴露于輻射下等方式引導發生的。阿部知子和她的同事就在進行這一工作以培育大米。他們的工作地點位于東京外部的埼玉縣仁科加速器研究中心。不同之處在于他們沒有像其他國家一樣，利用纖弱的X射線和伽馬射線來引發變異。他們將種子放入粒子加速器，并用重離子對種子進行轟擊碰撞。重離子是大原子去掉電子后只剩原子核的狀態。這一方法比輻射法的效果好十到一百倍，并且有用的種子不易被忽略掉。
Dr Abe's plan is to use these mutations to create salt-tolerant rice. She has tried to do that several times in the past, but the result did not taste very nice. Her latest effort was stimulated by the flooding with seawater of almost 24,000 hectares of farmland by the tsunami which followed an earthquake in March last year. Salt-tolerant rice would, though, be of much wider use than just restoring the paddies of Miyagi prefecture and its neighbours, the worst-affected part of the country, to full productivity. About a third of the world's rice paddies have salt problems, and yields in such briny fields may be half what they would be if the water in them were fresh.
阿部知子博士計劃利用變異制造出耐鹽的大米。她已經嘗試了多次，但結果不盡如人意。最近的一次嘗試是由于去年三月地震引起的海嘯沖過了近兩萬四千公頃農田。耐鹽大米的作用不僅僅是還原日本受傷害最大的宮城縣內和附近的稻田。全球三分之一的稻田都受到鹽的影響，此類稻田的收成僅為正常稻田的一半。
To induce the mutations, Dr Abe bombarded germinating seeds with carbon ions for 30 seconds. She then planted them in fields in Miyagi. Of 600 seeds that have undergone this treatment, 250 thrived and themselves produced healthy seeds.
為了引發變異，阿部知子博士用碳離子轟擊發芽的種子30秒，然后將其種入宮城縣稻田中。在進行了上述實驗的600粒種子中，有250粒成活并產出了健康的種子。
The next stage of the project, to be carried out this month, is to take 50 grains from each of the successful plants and repeat the process with them. The resulting specimens will then be sorted and the best (ie, those that have flourished in the saline soils of Miyagi's paddies) selected for crossbreeding, in order to concentrate desirable mutations into reproducible lines of plants.
本周即將進行這一計劃的下一步驟，用50粒成活的種子重復進行上述實驗，再將產出的種子分類。為了使種子變異充分，并且適于種植生產，在宮城縣鹽地生長得最好的部分將再進行雜交培育。
The result, Dr Abe hopes, will be a viable salt-tolerant strain that is ready for market within four years. With luck, this time, it will be a tasty one as well.
阿部知子博士希望能在四年內培育出市場需要的耐鹽大米，幸運的話這一次的大米將會香甜可口。
