A group of seeds, including orchid and sealwort (a kind of traditional Chinese herb) have been taken into space for breeding tests, accompanying the three taikonauts in China's Shenzhou-12 manned spaceship.
The Shenzhou-12 docked with the country's space station core module Tianhe last month on June 17 in China's latest experiment in space-induced mutation breeding. That refers to the process of exposing seeds to conditions such as cosmic radiation in spaceflight, including recoverable satellites, and then sending them back to Earth for further observation and planting.
China has been carrying out space breeding for 34 years since its first such experiment in 1987 with a recoverable satellite, according to Zhang Yunwei, a professor at the College of Grassland Science and Technology of China Agricultural University (CAU).
He says the technique is an effective means of creating new varieties of crops.
China, a powerhouse in breeding plants in space, has sent various seeds of plants – including rice, maize, wheat, rhodiola rosea and dendrobium officinale – into space.
"As of 2018, China had bred 42 new rice varieties through space breeding," says Zhang. "In 2006, a satellite named Shijian-8 returned to Earth carrying 215kg of seeds ranging from grains to vegetables and fruits, the largest payload of its kind."
Space breeding has helped to produce about 200 new types of mutated plants in China that have been approved for cultivation, Zhang says.
Since 2009, the National Engineering Research Centre of Plant Space Breeding of South China Agricultural University and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) have been engaging in research and application of space breeding technology.
In 2018, 14 research institutes, including CAAS and CAU, established China's space breeding industry innovation alliance to boost the commercialisation of the technology. So far, at least 130 research institutes in the country have participated in space breeding research.