Space seeds to be bred in Guangdong's rural area
2022-05-23 10:35     Source : Newsgd.com

Starting from May 19, 16 varieties of seeds carried by the Shenzhou-13 manned spaceship are being cultivated and bred in Guangdong. These space "passengers" include seeds of rice, tea, tobacco, broccoli, eggplant, and peanut.

"The Shenzhou-13 spacecraft has set a new record for the on-orbit time of seeds (183 days), which is of great value for the research on the long-term space environment’s impact on the seeds and their gene mutations." said Guo Tao, deputy director of the National Plant Space Breeding Technology Research Center in South China Agricultural University (SCAU).

Guo stated seeds of peanut and tea tree will be sown simultaneously in Guangdong's Heyuan and Chaozhou in July, with an aim to get original and excellent germplasm resources.

Since 1996, the Center has done experiments of 26 batches of space breeding and has developed 60 new rice varieties.

Editor: Zheng Sihui