More Virgin Sturgeons

The Soviet caviar industry has a persistent problem: too many sturgeons are males, which yield no caviar./- And despite years of effort, no one yet has discovered any way to alter this unproductive balance of nature. But Soviet Biologist Boris Astaurov, an authority on practical sex determination, is about ready to solve the problem, thus satisfying Soviet gourmets and pleasing Soviet authorities who prize the export earnings of caviar. (The gourmets and the authorities tend to be the same people.)

Dr. Astaurov has spent 30 years on his research. He began by working out dependable ways to make silkworm eggs hatch into worms of the desired sex. Female worms are comparatively easy to produce: Astaurov's most dependable system is to wash unfertilized eggs and dunk them for 18 minutes in water heated to 115DEG F. This heat shock makes the eggs start developing as if they had been fertilized, and since they contain no male contribution, they all produce females like their mothers.

But the cocoons of male silkworms yield almost one-third more silk than those of females, so Dr. Astaurov concentrated next on making silkworm eggs hatch into males. His most successful technique is to expose unfertilized eggs to X rays. This rough treatment kills the delicate female genetic material but does no apparent harm to other parts of the eggs. Then Dr. Astaurov fertilizes the eggs with male sperm that has not been irradiated. When the embryos develop, they are free of female influence; they all grow into high-yield male silkworms.

Now Dr. Astaurov figures that his techniques will soon be advanced enough to try on sturgeons. He plans to start with crude caviar--unfertilized eggs that have been stripped from the female fish. If he succeeds in forcing the eggs to produce females only, the fish that graduate from scientific hatcheries will gradually dominate the sturgeon population. The only males left to swim with the caviar-rich females will be the product of old-fashioned natural spawning in waters unsupervised by the state.

/- The old Dwight Fiske ditty that holds that "caviar comes from virgin sturgeon" is biologically misleading. Since sturgeon eggs are fertilized externally, after they have been released by egg-bearing females, all female sturgeons are virgins, by mammalian standards, whether or not they have produced caviar.

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