Pakistan celebrates return of Pakistani seeds from Chinese space station

Islamabad: Pakistan has formally celebrated the return of Pakistani seeds from Chinese space station.

China helped Pakistan take seven herbal seeds to the Chinese space station for space breeding by exposing them to cosmic radiation and microgravity to mutate their genes, and in this regard an event was held here to mark the successful return of the seeds.

The seeds were launched into outer space carried by Shenzhou-14 spaceship on June 5, 2022, and after six months of flying, returned to the earth with the Shenzhou-14 astronaut crew on December 4 last year.

Addressing the audience at the ceremony here, Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal said that the new phase of seed cooperation between Pakistan and China was critically important for Pakistan to meet the food security challenge in the future. He mentioned that the South Asian country was in dire need of seed cooperation to meet the climate change challenges.

Liu Xinming, a chief scientist from China’s Ningbo University, said the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs transferred the seeds to China Manned Space Agency in April last year.

Atia-tul-Wahab, a professor at the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, contended that her institute proposed the government to send the herbs’ seeds to space.

“We sent some grains to the space and kept the same quantity in our laboratory. Now upon their return, we will closely examine them and do their tests at our laboratory. Then both seed varieties will be sowed separately to see the end results through comparison,” she said.

Atia-tul-Wahab highlighted that it was for the first time that Pakistan sent seeds to space and it was a landmark achievement for the country, adding that her lab was eying for sending food staples including rice, wheat and pulses to space for further research.

She said that the herbs sent to space are used in traditional Pakistani medicine, and that it is hoped that the space breeding will enable scientists at her institute to produce medicine for incurable diseases.

Pang Chunxue, charge d’affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, said the experiment will surely be recorded in the history of China-Pakistan friendship as a landmark of the science and technology cooperation of both countries.