30.01 Russian Space Farmers Harvest Wheat, Peas and Greens

MOSCOW, January 29 (RIA Novosti) – A variety of crops have been successfully harvested on board the International Space Station and verified as safe to eat, a Russian scientist said Wednesday.

“The experiments with peas have been very promising,” Margarita Levinskikh, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems told an annual space conference in Moscow.

Russian cosmonauts have also grown Japanese leafy greens and a variety of dwarf wheat that has produced seeds of “just extraordinary quality,” she added.

Levinskikh said that next year Russian cosmonauts will sow rice, tomatoes and bell peppers after repairing the station’s Lada greenhouse, a cooperative effort between the institute and the Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University.