"These green peppers are more tender in taste, and their size huge. As long as their price is not too steep, I'll definitely buy them," said Zhao Ming, a farmer who tried a prototype of the new product.

These sweet green peppers with high-altitude parentage are being bred by Jiading Agrotechnical Center, an institute responsible for crop research and development. The peppers are expected to receive health and safety certification from the city's Science and Technology Commission next month, said Xu Lan, a member of the center's technical staff.

The green pods didn't actually ride into space themselves. But they did spring from seeds sent aloft by a Beijing-based space technology academy.

Both pepper and tomato seeds spun in orbit around the Earth for 15 days. During their satellite journey, they were bombarded by a wide range of cosmic rays. The energy absorbed in near-zero-gravity conditions produced mutations to the genes of the seeds.

After the satellite returned to Earth and was recovered, the Jiading researchers planted 400 seeds to see whether the mutations were beneficial. Some were, some weren't.

The first generation of "space peppers" were not very stable and had a distinctively misshapen appearance.

To solve the problem, horticulturists created a hybrid by breeding the space seed with a local variety.

Xu said the hybrid's second generation represents a substantial advance.

The space peppers, at about 15 centimeters long, 10 centimeters in diameter and weighing 200 grams, are roughly twice the size of their Earth-sired cousins. And crop yield should reach 52,500 kilograms per hectare, about 30 percent more than is found in a common pepper patch, Xu said.

"The space pepper contains more nutrients, trace elements, vitamin C and dissolvable sugars," she said.

Other scientists also claim the special conditions in outer space produce beneficial characteristics in plant seeds.

"People don't have to worry about eating space food," said Pan Yingjie, president of Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "Unlike other genetically modified food, space food changes its characteristics on its own rather than through operations by biologists."

(www. eastday.com 12/1/2000)