US ASTRONAUT John Blaha this month harvested the first crop grown from
seed in space.
Seeds of a special 鈥渟uper-dwarf鈥� wheat were planted on 6 August in Greenhouse
Svet, a growth chamber on Russia鈥檚 Mir space station. Blaha harvested 32 mature
plants on 6 December.
Many proposals for long space missions assume that plants will provide oxygen
and food. 鈥淭he plants were a little disoriented, but not as much as I thought
they might be,鈥� says Frank Salisbury, principal investigator for the experiment
at Utah State University in Cache Valley.
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