October 15-16, 2003, China successfully carried out the first manned space launch, realizing the Chinese nation's dream of flying. On board the Shenzhou V spacecraft, there were a number of "special passengers" - plant seeds. In fact, they have ridden on the previous launch of the Shenzhou spacecraft and the return satellite, counting the old space travel passengers. So why do space flights take these plant seeds with them? Can they also describe to us the wonderful journey to space?

Plant seeds can't speak, but there are ways to learn about their experiences during space travel. When scientists root and germinate seeds that have returned from space and compare them to similar plants that have not traveled to space, they often find some interesting differences. For example, eggplant seeds that have traveled on the unmanned Shenzhou-1 spacecraft have been cultivated to produce fruits that are larger than basketballs and smaller than eggs. From these, scientists screened and bred excellent varieties to promote them, thus advancing the development of agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry. After years of efforts, experts have cultivated "space rice", "space tomatoes", "space cucumbers", "space peppers "and other new varieties. They generally have the advantages of high yield, good quality and strong vitality. Where do these advantages come from? From space.

In the vastness of space, due to cosmic ray radiation, due to the special environment in microgravity, high vacuum, making part of the genetic material inside the plant seeds produced subtle changes. Some of the plant seed progeny in the direction of people want to change, such as, the fruit becomes larger, disease resistance enhanced, while there are some changes on the contrary. Scientists select and breed plant seeds that have traveled through space, continuously selecting and breeding good mutant plants, eliminating those bad mutant plants, and breeding good mutant plants for more than four generations to stabilize their traits, and ultimately breeding into new space varieties.

Now, space vegetables have come into thousands of households, becoming a delicious delicacy on our table. For example, the content of iron and vitamin C in space cucumbers have been greatly increased; space gourds can grow to one meter long; space peppers are not only big and tasty, but also bear beautiful yellow bell peppers and red bell peppers. In addition, because space vegetables are disease-resistant, pesticides are seldom used in the growth process. They are healthful green vegetables.

In addition to food, these special passengers returning from space have many uses! Scientists found that some of the vegetable gourds cultivated with space seeds became bitter. This is because the content of bittersweet inside increased. So there are experts intend to extract from the space gourd bitter gourd, the development of good medicine for diabetes. Other scientists are committed to breeding more beautiful and new space flowers to beautify our lives. In addition, people also hope that through the space breeding, to obtain drought-resistant, saline-resistant new grass, new tree species, used to better green the motherland, to maintain soil and water.

The small plant seeds after some space travel, as if to obtain the "magic", can have so many wonderful changes and magical use. In fact, the real magician is smart and hard-working scientists, is their knowledge and work to create a miracle!