Radiation and tracer techniques in agriculture and related sciences
In agriculture, Radiation and radio-isotopes are used for the nutritional studies of trace elements, mechanism of photosynthesis, plant protection on the action of insecticides, metabolisms, uptake of fertilizers, ions mobility in soils, plants and finally in food preservation.
Isotopes are atoms of a certain element which have the same number of protons, but different number of neutrons in the nucleus of the atoms. Stable isotopes do not experience any change over time, e.g., 2H, 13 C, 15 N, 18 O these are used for labelling compounds as possible intermediates in biosynthetic pathways. Unstable isotopes are known as radio-isotopes which are subject to radio-active decay. For biological investigation Carbon and Hydrogen, for metabolic studies S, P and alkaline earth metals are used. For studies on protein, alkaloids and amino acids, labelled nitrogen atom give more specific....
