Comments on: Seeds in Space

By: Tinkie Winkie

Tinkie Winkie — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:32:48 +0000

Space tomatoes would be poisonous? Awww… That’s too bad they told you that, and rediculous — tomato stems and leaves are, but not the fruit. I wonder how many kinds that left with a “bad taste in their mouths” about tomatoes? We too did the Park space tomatoes in elementary school and we all ate the tomatoes for weeks. True I wasn’t sure I wanted to see another tomato for a while…

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:27:48 +0000

When I was in elementary school, we grew the space tomatoes and we all ate them and to the best of my knowledge nothing bad happened to any of us.

By: Nerdfury

Nerdfury — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:58:22 +0000

Caveman: Would you mind not posting if you don’t have anything useful to add?

By: p.

p. — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:21:56 +0000

I wish they would do bluebonnets. I hate waiting all year for those.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:42:51 +0000

My class in grade school planted some of the space tomatoes. I don’t remember what happened to them as it was at the end of the year and some students took them home to grow, but I remember everyone being cautioned that the fruit would be poisonous. I guess my slacker school wasn’t one of the thousands that sent results to NASA. Interesting to find out that wasn’t a part of grade school I made up.

By: Blephen

Blephen — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:57:14 +0000

Thanks a lot for posting this. I’m a student at UF and I had no clue that we had one of the space trees on our campus.

By: natlynn

natlynn — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:11:48 +0000

Very spiffy!
But I have to say that like n2y2, I have some reservations about the handling of the space seeds. It just seems careless to plant them without understanding the mutations fully.

By: Cotton

Cotton — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:35:55 +0000

Neat-O!

By: n2y2

n2y2 — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:40:28 +0000

I am sure that your neighborhood geneticist it correct, but direct exposure to unfiltered cosmic rays does have a way of accelerating the mutations.

I am also a little surprised at the reckless abandon with which these seeds are handled. When genetically modified plants are created, they are grown in mine shafts so that they cannot spread or pollinate with other plants. These space seeds are also genetically modified but they are just sent out to school children for experiments (in the Park Seed article)?

The only substantial difference I see is that in one case the mutations are random, but the other has controlled changes.