12 June 2017
Seeds from an over 5,000-year-old cypress in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province have sprouted after being taken into space by Chinese astronauts in 2016, a research group have said. “Twenty-eight seeds had sprouted by the end of May,’’ Zhao Xia, from the rare tree germ plasm resources group, said 12 June. “Some 150 seeds, collected in August 2016, were taken into space on the Shenzhou 11 mission and kept at the Tiangong 2 lab from 15 September to 18 November 2016. “The sprouting project began on 15 May, and another 150 seeds that had not gone into space were germinated at the same time in a comparative study,’’ Zhao said.
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