The produce departments of the future may look like nothing on earth, and with good reason. Chinese scientists have been growing tomatoes the size of softballs, cucumbers as long as baseball bats and other outsize fruits and vegetables, using seeds that have been shot into space. The seeds are then exposed to seven types of extraterrestrial conditions, from zero gravity and cosmic radiation to subatomic particles. (46) As these space veggies grow back on earth, they are selected for desirable traits—bulk, appearance or certain nutrients—then bred through successive generations to ensure that the mutations are consistent.
Chinese scientists don’t understand exactly how a trip into space alters the seeds’DNA and yields such effects, but it’s not just size that changes. (47) Tong Yichao, whose firm, the Beijing Flying Eagle Green Foods Group, has been sending seeds and seedlings aboard Chinese spacecraft since 1999, says it has grown s
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