China plans to launch a new recoverable satellite special for plants breeding, the first of its kind in the world, according to an expert with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS).

The project has not formally started yet but the preparation is underway, said Liu Luxiang, director of the Space Breeding Center under the CAAS.

The satellite will be designed slightly differently from an ordinary satellite as less protection against space radiation is needed for the plant seeds it carries to undergo mutation, Liu said.

Recoverable satellites were first used to carry plants or seeds in the late 1950s. With nearly 118 satellites launched for life sciences research from 1957 to 1998 in the world, plants or seeds were carried about 42 times.

"It has been proven that outer space, with radiation and weightlessness, has obvious impact on plants and seeds and leads to a genetic mutation in plants," Liu said.

The research findings were used to study the impact outer space has on humans and to develop plants that can grow outside earth, by many countries like the United States and Russia, which mainly use manned space flights.

"China has an unique research perspective from the other countries," Liu said, "We grow high-quality strains of plants through selecting seeds from those mutated after the space journey. "

China has sent more than 70 strains of plants into outer space with other recoverable satellites, unmanned spacecraft and balloons since 1987. But no satellite special for plant breeding has been launched yet.

"The exact factors that cause the genetic mutation in plant seeds and how the mutation goes have not been identified yet, though we have drawn a general picture about the changes," said Liu, adding, "We hope to collect more detailed information with this special satellite."

More strains of plants will be sent outside with this satellite, including grains, flowers, trees, grass, medical herbs and microbes, with larger volumes than before.

With this technology, China has grown a 750-gram "super" green pepper and a 250-gram tomato. The strain of rice, developed from seeds having been on a space flight, produces an output per hectare that is higher by 10 to 15 percent than ordinary rice.
In fact, outer space simply speeds up the genetic mutation that also takes place in nature, rather than modifying the genes of plants, Liu said. "Plants developed with this technology have proven to be safe for humans so far."

The impact on different plants varied in outer space. For example, wheat seeds grow better after the space flight while watermelon grows worse after space travel than watermelon which never leaves the planet, he added.