Fighting hunger with nuclear science

We need to grow more food, and we need to do it better. We need food to be more nutritious, to grow in more difficult places, to be more resilient to weather extremes and to be safer for human consumption.

Millions of people are going to bed hungry, in every corner of the world. The number facing high levels of food insecurity has more than doubled since 2020. Climate extremes threaten to increase the number of crop failures, making it even more difficult to meet increasing global demand.

We have the tools to change that. Nuclear science is a tool that helps us to cultivate stronger, healthier, safer and more nutritious crops.  

The IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), through the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, are developing these tools and helping those who need them most to learn how to apply them.

Our Atoms4Food initiative brings together knowledge gathered during our decades of experience helping countries get the best out of their soils, crops and coastlines to feed their growing populations.

Launched in 2023, Atoms4Food was created to help countries boost food security and tackle hunger. It provides countries with tailored solutions to enhance their agricultural productivity, reduce food loss, ensure food safety, improve nutrition and adapt to climate change.

At the heart of Atoms4Food is nuclear science. It brings a level of precision, accuracy and predictability rarely seen in the world of food production, where the large number of unpredictable variables — including seeds, weather and soil — can make it difficult to achieve reliable outcomes.

Nuclear irradiation is being used to induce natural mutations in plants to discover new varieties that can withstand irregular rainfall, saltier soil or more invasive insects. The IAEA and the FAO even sent seeds into space to help our scientists back on Earth learn more about plant mutation.

Isotope hydrology is being used to track the movement of water and fertilizer through the ground and into a plant, so as to discover the most effective way for a farmer to support growth in specific crops. Nuclear techniques such as polymerase chain reaction tests are used to monitor animal diseases, allowing us to spot outbreaks before they happen, and irradiation is used to eliminate insect pests such as the fruit fly without the need for chemicals. Methods such as the deuterium dilution analysis technique improve human health by revealing human nutrition levels, while radiotracers are used to check whether food is contaminated.

As the articles in this Bulletin lay out, many communities around the world already use these innovative approaches and many more want to use them. Countries send their scientists to us for training, and we send them back equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to apply the techniques locally and to pass them on to farmers and other food producers.

Farmers do not need a physics degree to apply these precise methods. The IAEA and the FAO, and our national partners around the world, are experienced at transferring these innovative technologies from the laboratory to the field to the dinner plate.

For decades, children in Kenya, Peru, Bangladesh and dozens of other countries have gone to school and to bed better nourished thanks to the innovation nuclear science has brought to the way their country produces food.

Together, through Atoms4Food, we can spread these innovations even further, giving policymakers, scientists and food producers across the world the best tools science has to offer to ensure the most fundamental necessity of life: enough reliable, nutritious and safe food.