On August 23, some flower seeds, which once aboard the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft and traveled in space for more than three months, arrived at Yunnan Jinke Flower Engineering Research Center Co., Ltd.

The flower seeds that went into space were selected by National Engineering Research Center for Floriculture, Technology Innovation Alliance of Flower Industry, and Yunnan Jinke Flower Engineering Research Center Co., Ltd. The seeds were composed of 21 kinds of hybrid rose seeds with a total weight of 101.8 g. These “space seed” will be sterilized and refrigerated for 90 days.

"Each seed has the potential to become a completely new variety, with completely different patterns and colors," said He Qiong, the Deputy General Manager of Yunnan Jinke. The company will bring the stable and new variety to market in about 4 years.

Under the influence of cosmic rays, weightlessness, space radiation caused by magnetic storms and so on, the arrangement or structure of genes of these seeds will change. New varieties that can be successfully bred through space breeding generally have the advantages of high yield, good quality and strong disease resistance.

Space breeding is an important technique for cultivating new flower varieties. He Qiong said that the “space seed” is a new step, which is of great significance to cultivate excellent new flowers and improve the R&D of new flowers with independent intellectual property rights.

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(Editors: Christine, Rachel)