The circle in the middle is the radiation source, and the further away the plants were planted the less mutations occurred, with the plants right next to the source dying.
So this was not the normal method of breeding prior to GMOs? I always hear the argument above mentioned whenever GMOs are discussed.
Fallacy aside, it's an emotionally persuasive argument. I'm wondering if it's a central talking point that was developed by a marketing team for forum use.
I don't know how normal atomic gardens were, looking at their history, it looks like they were relatively popular from the mid-40s to the 60s.
There are more ways to raise the mutation rate in plants, for example, by using chemicals like ethyl methanesulfonate. Ironically, many "organic" companies still sell cultivars that have been mutated using these processes. I'd be more scared of a plant with several unknown, unpredictable mutations than of a plant that has a single, directed mutation.
The most "standard" breeding methods are still the "manual" ones like hybridization, where you use two different plant lines that are as homozygous as possible (in other words, they have been inbred for many generations so there's little to no genetic variety, you won't have any surprises when you use them for breeding).
One famous example are Norman Borlaug's high yield semi-dwarf wheat varieties (edit: made roughly at the same time as atomic gardens were en vogue) - he crossed dwarf wheat varieties from Japan that gave little yield with high-yield varieties from America that were so thin that if the season was good and the seeds were heavy, the plants would break from the weight. The resulting semi-dwarf varieties had good yield with a stable stem.
a) because understandably customers may have concerns and b) results are very, very random
Here's one in Japan that seems to be still active: https://www.google.com/maps?q=2425,+Kamimurata,+Hitachiohmiy...
The circle in the middle is the radiation source, and the further away the plants were planted the less mutations occurred, with the plants right next to the source dying.