On June 17, the Long March 2 F Yao 12 carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou 12 manned spacecraft was ignited and lifted off at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. As a carry item, a total of 29.9 grams of Nanjing orchid seeds were taken into space with three astronauts to embark on a three-month space journey.

The orchid species to be bred in space this time is red grass, which was selected and bred by Fujian Forestry Science and Technology Experimental Center, a unit directly under the Fujian Forestry Bureau.

Currently, space breeding has been widely used in agricultural seed industry innovation. Orchid space breeding is to send carefully selected orchid seeds into space, make full use of cosmic radiation, high vacuum, microgravity and other environments to promote changes in the chromosome structure of orchid seeds, and then undergo laboratory tissue culture to achieve orchid species variation. An experiment. Compared with conventional breeding, space breeding has a higher probability of gene mutation, which helps to breed new orchid varieties with longer flowering period, brighter, bigger, more exotic, and more fragrant flowers.

The Fujian Forestry Science and Technology Experiment Center and the Flower Research Institute of the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences have jointly carried out research on space breeding of Nanjing orchids since 2016, using the "Tiangong-2" manned spacecraft, the Long March 5B carrier rocket, and the Shenzhou 12 carrier The human spacecraft carries nearly 100g of "Nanjing Orchid" seeds. At present, two orchid seed germination lines have been obtained.

The Fujian Forestry Science and Technology Experiment Center will continue to use the new concept and technology of "Space Technology+" to carry out research on the mutations of orchid leaf color, flower color, and floral fragrance, as well as the cloning and functional analysis of mutant genes, and establish an orchid genetic transformation system to improve species Qualitative variation rate, accelerate the breeding speed, and promote the establishment of a directional breeding system of "space mutation breeding + genetic engineering breeding" for orchids.