A PUBLICITY stunt or serious science? With China鈥檚 space programme, it is hard to tell. The nation is set to launch a satellite that will carry plant seeds into space and bring them back to Earth for sowing, China鈥檚 official news agency Xinhua revealed last week. The idea is that radiation in space will cause genetic mutations that might have a beneficial effect.
Which would be fine, except that similar experiments by NASA drew a blank. For example, the seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred International flew soybean seeds to the International Space Station in 2002. When scientists later analysed seeds from soybean plants grown from the space seeds, they found slightly more carbohydrate and a little less oil than in the control seeds. But these figures were all within the normal range. 鈥淲e are now testing some of those seeds to see if there were any genetic changes,鈥� says company researcher Tom Corbin. 鈥淪o far, we have not detected any.鈥�
Conversely, Chinese researchers claim remarkable results from earlier space-based experiments, including trees that are more resistant to disease or vegetables that taste better. 鈥淚 think maybe the benefits were overly described,鈥� says Weijia Zhou, director of the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics in Madison, who was lead scientist on many space-based plant and seed experiments.
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