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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched seeds into space today as they intensify their joint efforts to develop new crops able to adapt to the ravages of climate change on Earth, the FAO press service reported.
The seeds from the IAEA and FAO agriculture and biotechnology laboratories are travelling to the International Space Station just as leaders meet at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh to discuss pressing environmental challenges, including the significant impact of the climate crisis on the world’s agrifood production systems.
“The world’s millions of smallholder farmers urgently require resilient, high-quality seeds adapted to increasingly challenging growing conditions. Innovative science like space breeding of improved crop varieties can help pave the road to a brighter future of better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said.
Seeds of Arabidopsis, a plant commonly used in genetic experiments, and Sorghum, a nutrient-packed grain used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol, will be exposed inside and outside of the International Space Station for approximately three months to conditions prevailing in space, primarily microgravity, a complex mixture of cosmic radiation and extreme low temperatures.
Upon their return, scientists at the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture will grow and screen them for useful traits to better understand space-induced mutations of plant seeds – a technique known as space mutagenesis – and identify new varieties able to adapt to changing terrestrial conditions associated with climate change.
According to the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, the stability of the world’s food supply will decrease in the future, severely affecting its most vulnerable people. The new crop varieties from space could help farmers and decision makers, who need to make substantial changes and investments in adapting to a changing climate, to sustain production and food quality.
The ongoing experiment is based on almost 60 years of experience of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre in inducing mutations in plants and thereby speeding up their breeding with the help of radiation to develop new agricultural crop varieties. So far, more than 3,400 mutant varieties of more than 210 plant species that were developed using induced genetic variation and mutation breeding – including numerous food crops, ornamentals and trees – have officially been released for commercial use in 70 countries.
