HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) – The latest cotton project at The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is out of this world!

Researchers at the institute are planning to grow cotton in space to study how its genetic makeup is altered in a zero-gravity environment. In comparing these space samples with cotton grown here on earth, scientists will be able to analyze the different outcomes and use the information in hopes of producing a higher-quality crop.

“Nobody’s really done this before at this point,” says Jeremy Schmutz, a faculty investigator at HudsonAlpha. “So, it’s kind of a new territory for all of us, and we’d like to say we know exactly what’s going to happen to these and what we’re going to learn from it, but we don’t. It’s science.”

The experiment on ISS is expected to go up in spring of 2021.