For 60 years, the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture (Joint Centre), based in Austria, has been speeding up the natural genetic adaptation of plants by using gamma radiation in laboratories to develop more resilient crop varieties and support global food security.

Amid the ravages of climate change, farmers increasingly struggle to produce enough food and the need for these crop varieties has become increasingly urgent. In 2022, scientists at the Joint Centre started exploring new avenues of research that could potentially speed up crop breeding even more.

One of the methods they considered was to send seeds up into space…