China is expecting to develop more new crop varieties with the
technology of space breeding, an official from the Space Breeding
Research Center (SBRC) of Chinese Academy of Agriculture Science
said Tuesday.
Liu Luxiang, director of SBRC, said many new germ plasms -- the
parts of the cell containing hereditary material -- and new strains
of rice and wheat were obtained, and ground simulations of space
environmental factors established a new way to induce mutations for
genetic improvement.
All the research contributed to the exploration of the mechanism of
space-induced mutation breeding and establishing the new technical
system of space breeding, Liu said.
He
said Chinese scientists were studying the specialties of the
mutations induced by different environmental factors during the
space flight from the different angles of particle biology,
physical field biology and gravity biology.
The utilization of the space resources would be tapped and a
theoretical system of space breeding would also be established, Liu
added.
As
one of the three countries in the world that had mastered the
technology of satellite recovery -- the others being the United
States and Russia -- China had made a series of achievements in
space breeding, Liu said, noting the new germ plasms and strains
created by combining space technology and modern breeding
technologies were exceptionally good quality.
Liu believed that with the formal launching and implementation of
the state's Space Breeding Project, more new crop varieties with
breakthrough characteristics would be obtained and the technology
of space breeding would be developed.
(Xinhua News Agency May 21, 2003)