{"id":48235,"date":"2025-07-30T19:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48235\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T19:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:14:14","slug":"florida-scientists-sending-seeds-into-space-to-study-farming-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48235\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida scientists sending seeds into space to study farming solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strawberry, orchid and grass seeds will be sent to the International Space Station to study the effects of space travel on their genetics. <\/p>\n

TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 University of Florida researchers will be sending four types of seeds to the International Space Station to study farming solutions for harsh weather conditions.<\/p>\n

Strawberries from the Tampa Bay area, two types of Florida orchids and a type of turf grass will blast off on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after noon Thursday from Cape Canaveral, according to a news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The seeds will stay untouched on the space station for about a week and will return on the next scheduled trip back to Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSpace is the ultimate high-stress environment for plants. On Earth, the extreme environments we have to contend with include heat waves, drought and hard freezes,\u201d UF professor Wagner Vendrame said. \u201cThis could be a way of generating more crops that are resilient to those kinds of stressors.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the trip, researchers will plant and grow the seeds to test the genes for changes that only come from a space flight, according to the release.<\/p>\n

Genetic testing of the plants as compared to the same ones on Earth will give the research team a comparison of how they change when they go through conditions like microgravity and re-entry to Earth.<\/p>\n

This could pave the way for growing food on future missions to other planets like the Moon or Mars.<\/p>\n

The experiment is part of a broader, global collaboration with the goal of learning from space-induced genetic changes. Vendrome’s research is part of a space farming project by space strategy company Jaguar Space, which encompasses groups from all around the world who send seeds from places like Nigeria, Pakistan and Argentina.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strawberry, orchid and grass seeds will be sent to the International Space Station to study the effects of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[200,79],"class_list":["post-48235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}