11 July 2021
Rice seeds that travelled 23 days in space on the Chang'e 5 lunar probe in November 2020 have begun yielding grain. After over 4 months of growth, the dropping ears of the 2,000 "space rice plants" at the Space Breeding Research Centre of the South China Agricultural University in South China's Guangdong Province promise a fruitful harvest, as researchers bagged the seeds that are each 1 cm long into 3 large parcels. The best seeds will be bred in laboratories and later planted in fields. Before the rice can be sold to consumers, more generations of breeding and testing is needed.
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