Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Gurr
"I think that you will find that this is no longer practised. It was tried
with exhibition chrysanthemums in the 1960's and the results were
disasterous. Cuttings were irradiated and many mutations (sports) were
produced. These were found to be quite unstable and 'broke down' genetically
after a couple of years.
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Might not have worked for chrysanthemums/cuttings, but in some other cases it works well. According to this, there are around 1,800 crop varieties in commercial production which have been bred from nuclear mutagenic methods.
New Agriculturist: Focus on . . . Mutation techniques for plant breeding
Plenty of other hits indicate that the method is in active use.