![]() ![]() “Firstly, we are working on improving crop yields and productivity of crops such as grains, legumes, roots and tubers – for example, cassava and sweet potato,” she says. Laffan/IAEAīy selectively breeding plants grown from the mutated seeds, Sivasankar and her team hope to create new crop strains. Shoba Sivasankar examines sorghum seeds that spent around five months at the International Space Station. She adds that the radiation outside the ISS could be “more than a hundredfold higher” than the natural radiation possible on Earth. “In space, the stress that will be encountered by an organism would be at the highest level and beyond anything that we can actually simulate on Earth,” explains Sivasankar. ![]() However, the space environment, which offers a broader spectrum of radiation and additional extremes like microgravity and temperature fluctuations, has the potential to induce genetic alterations that differ from, or are induced much quicker than, those typically observed using terrestrial radiation sources. Shoba Sivasankar, head of Plant Breeding and Genetics for the joint FAO and IAEA Center of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, explains that scientists are able to artificially induce plant mutations on Earth using gamma rays and X-rays. Now screening will begin to identify favorable traits in the mutated seeds. Seeds of a cereal grain called sorghum, and a type of cress called Arabidopsis, spent several months on the ISS before they were returned to Earth this April for analysis. The objective: to induce genetic mutations in the seeds through exposure to cosmic radiation and microgravity, that could help develop resilient crops capable of thriving in the face of the escalating climate crisis. ![]() In 2022, the joint laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sent seeds on a trip to the International Space Station (ISS). Now, scientists are turning to the vastness of space for solutions. But the Earth’s climate is changing faster than plants can naturally evolve, meaning that many of the plants we rely on for food are under threat.Īgriculture is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of changing climate conditions and although changes to temperature, rainfall patterns, and frost might extend a growing season or enable the cultivation of different crops, climate change also introduces major challenges for farming. Spontaneous natural mutations produce new traits, such as drought tolerance and disease resistance, which can help the plant to thrive. Plants naturally adapt to grow in challenging environments. ![]()
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