Posted on 09/11/2022 3:13:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin
It is regularly eaten by more than half the world's population. And now, it's been grown in microgravity, on board the newly launched Chinese Wentian space laboratory.
Wentian launched in July and joined up with the Tianhe module of China's new space station. Its original complement of eight experiments included one that attempted to grow rice in microgravity.
There were actually two types of rice launched as part of the experiment. A tall shoot variety reached almost 30 centimeters in the first month of growth, and a dwarf variety reached around 5 cm. Both of these growth amounts are on par for these particular rice varieties on Earth.
Rice isn't the only thing in the experiment, though. Scientists added Arabidopsis thaliana. It's a common flowering plant typically used to study genetic mutations, which can be especially helpful when carrying out experiments in space.
Rice and mutation studies both have a long history in spaceflight. And any space-based farming effort will surely include rice.
This isn't the first time rice has been successfully grown in space. A team of students from Indonesia tested the effects of growing rice in microgravity on the ISS back in 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
/s
Now to successfully grow it here on the planet.
Yawn have been growing plants and food at the iss for a long time now, China ain’t all that
When they can cook with a wok in orbit, THEN they’ll have something.
Next project: to grow ramen noodles in space.
Cooking rice in space is more problematic.
Except that they are doing it today and we gave it up to fund Muslim outreach.
-PJ
You didn’t hear? The Chinese astronauts have become very proficient with spacewoks.
Just stop no Muslim outreach, the iss has be manned for 20 continuously lots of research, China is doing baby steps
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