(CNN)A SpaceX Dragon capsule started its journey back to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday with an unusual cargo: 12 bottles of wine and 320 grapevines.
They were taken into space in November 2019 and March 2020, respectively, as part of an experiment organized by European startup Space Cargo Unlimited (SCU), it said in a statement published Monday.
The SpaceX capsule is scheduled to land Wednesday, according to a tweet from the ISS, and will splash down off Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The research, known as Mission Wise, is exploring how to develop "new ways of growing plants on the Earth and scale up to feed more people on the planet."
The vines will be analyzed to see how they have changed during their time in space, where the effects of microgravity and a higher radiation exposure than on Earth accelerate genetic changes.
The unusual payload is part of an agricultural research project.
Scientists will then compare them to