Space mission seeds offer fresh insights

China’s historic 23-day Chang’e 5 mission has not only obtained rocks and soil samples from the moon, but has also brought back a group of seeds that traveled the furthest in the nation’s agricultural and forestry histories.

More than 30 kinds of seeds, including rice, oats, alfalfa and orchid, were placed inside the Chang’e 5 spacecraft and orbited

around the moon for about 15 days.

Scientists wished to check what would happen to the seeds after being exposed to a unique environment in lunar orbit and also hoped that they could develop beneficial mutations.

The seeds were chosen by organizations such as China Agricultural University, Beijing Forestry University, South China Agricultural University and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in a spacebased mutation breeding program arranged by the China High-Tech Industrialization Association.