China will launch its first satellite for breeding plant seeds in September at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, said official sources on Saturday.

 

The satellite will make a 15-day space flight, said officials with the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

 

A conference was held Saturday to mark the accomplishment of the building of the breeding satellite, Shijian-8.

 

The satellite is expected to carry over 2,000 shares of plant seeds in nine categories and 180 groups, including seeds of grains, cash crops, and forage plants, as well as seeds of fungi and molecular biomaterials that have been sequenced.

 

The commission presides over the whole Shijian-8 project, while the Ministry of Agriculture is in charge of the breeding of plant seeds and the China Aerospace Science Group Company is responsible for designing and building the satellite, and studying the space environment for breeding.

 

China is now the third nation in the world capable of recovering satellites. So far, the country has launched 22 recoverable satellites with only one failure.

 

Since 1987, China has conducted breeding tests on nine return satellites and a number of new species of plant seeds have been bred in space by Chinese scientists.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2006)