After veggies, flowers to bloom in space

After veggies, flowers to bloom in space
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After having a sumptuous feast of \"Outredgeous\" red romaine lettuce grown in space, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are set to witness flowers blooming on the orbiting laboratory after the New Year.

Washington: After having a sumptuous feast of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce grown in space, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are set to witness flowers blooming on the orbiting laboratory after the New Year.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren has activated the "Veggie" plant growth system and it’s rooting "pillows" containing Zinnia seeds on the space station. Zinnia is a genus of plants of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family. It is the first time that a flowering crop experiment will be grown on the orbiting laboratory, NASA said in a statement.

Growing zinnias in orbit will help provide precursory information about other flowering plants that could be grown in space. "Growing a flowering crop is more challenging than growing a vegetative crop such as lettuce," said Gioia Massa, NASA Kennedy Space Center payload scientist for Veggie.

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