China grows rice in space using new zero-gravity laboratory

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Rice plants have been cultivated from seeds in space for the first ever time in an experiment that could have major implications for future long-term missions. “The rice seedlings are growing very well,” Professor Huiqiong Zheng, a researcher at the Centre for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily. “We want to investigate how microgravity can affect the plant flowering time on the molecular level and whether it is possible to use the microgravity environment to control the related process.” Recommended Astronauts celebrate as flower blooms in the zero gravity of space Rice is one of the most popular foods on the International Space Station and has been a staple for astonauts since the Apollo missions. Nasa astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin ate meals of freeze-dried chicken and rice during the Apollo 11 mission, which saw Aldrin and Armstrong become the first people to walk on the Moon.