Australia: Space tomatoes seized in Sydney
The Tomato Rutgers California Supreme seeds were launched into space in April 1984 aboard NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility on Space Shuttle Challenger and returned to Earth in January 1990 on Space Shuttle Columbia.
They were part of an outer space seed experiment to see if the weightlessness and long exposure to radiation in space affects the seeds' growth.
The seeds found their way to Italy in the intervening decades but, in late May, arrived undeclared in Sydney and were intercepted by border agents and biosecurity officers.
The biosecurity officers irradiated the seeds using gamma rays to mitigate the risk to Australia's agriculture and, given their relative safety, were returned to the importer in July.
Read more at news.com.au