Superseeds in Space: The Straits Times

We are grateful for the partnership with JAXA to “seed” this project !

Excerpt from The Straits Times article:

In 2021, the island state sent coriander seeds to the International Space Station – an orbiting laboratory about 400km from Earth – as part of an Asia-Pacific project. Eleven countries contributed 22 herb seed types stored in a ziplock bag, to find out how space travel affects them.

While an astronaut’s health must be safeguarded from the harsh space environment, the coriander seeds more than held their own, turning into “superseeds” during their month-long stint in space.

When planted back on Earth, the seeds boasted a more luxuriant yield, weighing 41.4g versus their earthbound counterpart’s 33.1g.

Space radiation and microgravity – the condition of being weightless – led to genetic mutations in the seeds that could generate random but potentially useful traits, said the Singapore Food Agency in a joint reply with other institutions involved in the project.

The other institutions are Singapore Space and Technology, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Biodiversity Medicine (BD-MED).

Space Faculty’s very own Ms Gillian Chin, who was also Singapore’s point of contact for the Asian Herb in Space (AHiS) project, said: “The purpose of AHiS is to provide students and young researchers in the Asia-Pacific region an opportunity to learn about space biology.”