rl.'TPT ION STUD IES, GENET ICS AND PLANT BREED ING 1,2 (Barley, spring wheat, oats)

The atomic bomb brought to center stage of national attention the radia-tion studies at Washington State University applied to induced mutations and plant genetics. Barley and diploid wheat plants were exposed to various kinds of radiation from the Test Able atomic bomb at Bikini in 1946. The seeds of those plants were then brought to the Agronomy Department of WSU where Dr. Luther Smith compared the genetic and cytogenetic changes induced by the bomb and x-rays. He found the changes to be similar. Washington State pioneered in genetics and plant breeding even from its earliest history; but this cataclysmic event brought special attention to this work and provided an impetus still felt in the program. Indeed, early WSU history of the science of genetics included the rediscovery of the Mendelian principles of inheritance by Dr. William Jasper Spillman (Nilan, 1961) who produced the first wheat hybrids and initiated wheat improvement research at WSU 1894-1901. He sought to find the laws governing the transmission of characters from parents to offspring. In 1899, he mad