If you’re the type who worries about the air miles travelled by fruits and vegetables then these beauties aren’t for you. Because they have travelled a little further than most. The seeds from which they grew were fired into space, where they orbited the earth for two weeks.
Once they returned, they were cultivated in hothouses, producing monster specimens.
China, which is behind the space fruits and vegetables, says they could be the answer to the world’s food crisis.
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The 9.5kg tomatoes, nine-inch chillies, 15-stone pumpkins and enormous watermelons growing at the Guandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences can feed many more than their smaller cousins and may have more nutrients, scientists say.
China has been experimenting with space plants since the 1980s.
Previously it has claimed that the near zero gravity conditions – microgravity – have created high-yield rice and wheat plants, and tomatoes and peppers with harvests ten to 20 per cent greater than normal.
The country is desperate to find new ways to feed its 1.3 billion people, as farming land is gobbled up by factories.
The most recent batch of 2,000 seeds was launched into orbit in 2006 on the Shijian 8 satellite. Afterwards they were cultivated and the best specimens selected for further breeding.
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