Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ered by Imperial Chemical Industries and codenamed 1313 and 1414,
these agents were found to have deleterious effects on different types
of crops. Through Sir John Anderson, an official with responsibility for
the organization of Britain's wartime civilian and economic resources,
details of British findings regarding these agents were communicated to
Vannevar Bush, an official with close links to Roosevelt who had been in-
timately involved in the establishment, rapid expansion, and continued
oversight of offensive BW R&D in the US. Confirmation that this infor-
mation exchange took place is detailed in correspondence between An-
derson and Churchill, where Anderson speculated about the possible use
of these agents by the US against Japan. In the context of R&D on anti-
crop chemical and biological weapons (CBW) agents, the US announced
that considerable progress had been made in the screening of some 800
chemical anticrop warfare agents, and that a number of plant pathogens
had been identified as potential agents for use against food and cash
crops. Research would continue in the US throughout its offensive anti-
crop CW program (some of which would see use in the conflict in Viet-
nam) and on fungal plant pathogens and other agents for use against rice,
potatoes, and a wide range of herbaceous annuals, including tobacco,
soybeans, sugar beets, sweet potatoes, and cotton, and later for their po-
tential to destroy drug crops.
R&D into anticrop pathogens continued in the UK up to 1958, center-
ing on basic offensive research guided by a long-term strategy to develop
an effective offensive future BW capability. Biannual reports published
by the UK's Crop Committee and its successor, the Agricultural Defence
Advisory Committee (ADAC), noted the nature of fundamental research
conducted in this component of the UK's BW program between 1948 and
1955. Investigations included the following subject areas:
•
Herbicide research (1948)
6
•
Water content of cereals (1948)
7
•
Spore suspension research (1949)
8
•
Use of aircraft in agriculture (1949)
9
•
Anticrop chemical warfare (1949)
10
•
Countermeasures to anticrop and antianimal warfare (1949)
11
•
2-4,D (1950)
12
•
Phytotoxicity (1950)
13
Search WWH ::
Custom Search