Overview
- China's Shenzhou-23 astronauts have collected the first batch of rice grown from seeds taken to the Tiangong space station in May, Chinese state media reported.
- The experiment aims to produce and compare two consecutive seed‑to‑seed generations in orbit to study whether prolonged microgravity changes genetic stability or plant reproduction.
- Researchers loaded two seed lineages into the trial: japonica varieties that never left Earth and descendants of rice first grown in orbit in 2022, using two reproduction methods for comparison.
- The setup uses four planting units with six seeds each and contrasts sexual seed‑to‑seed propagation with a vegetative rebudding model to test which method better sustains harvests in orbit.
- Astronauts will return ears, seeds and frozen tissue to Earth for genetic and growth analysis and scientists say final conclusions will depend on whether returned seeds germinate and complete further growth cycles.