Chang'e-5 "space rice" ushers in harvest: each rice is about 1 cm long, a new Chinese original rice variety

On the morning of July 9, the summer was hot and the fragrance of rice was flowing. Guo Tao, deputy director of Huanong national plant space breeding Engineering Research Center, and Wang Jiafeng, deputy researcher and laboratory director of Huanong national plant space breeding Engineering Research Center, are harvesting rice in the field in the experimental base of South China Agricultural University.

Eight months ago, these rice seeds followed the chang'e-5 spacecraft on a 23 day round the moon tour. They were exposed to cosmic rays in the deep space environment and returned to the earth safely to "settle" in Guangdong.

Eight months later, more than half of tianlongbian's No. 15-1 rice was tall, and its golden ears bent it down. Each of its seeds is about 1 cm long, and the whole body is off white and brown. Holding it in the palm of the hand is a little prickly.

This batch of rice was transplanted by single hole and single plant. From the aerial view, we can see that this experimental field is a little sparse. On both sides of them, two rice fields spread out like "lattices", each of which showed different characteristics of bluish yellow and different height.

In the autumn of the near future, the descendants of this group of "Chinese Tiandao" will start to raise seedlings in the laboratory and be transplanted into the field; In the next few years, they will continue to breed for generations on the land of Guangdong, purify excellent characters, and are expected to become 100% of China's original new rice varieties.