British astronaut Tim Peake has invited schoolchildren to help him in an experiment to learn more about how to grow food in space.

Major Peake wants pupils to plant the seeds of rocket leaves that have been in orbit and compare their growth with normal plants.

He said finding ways to grow food in space will be essential if humans are to travel and live on distant planets.

The Royal Horticultural Society and UK Space Agency will run the experiment.

Maj Peake is due to begin a six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. He will be taking with him more than a million seeds of rocket which will be distributed to 10,000 schools on his return.

Children are being asked to apply to do scientific experiments on the seeds to find out whether six months in space has affected them in any way.

According to Maj Peake, the experiments will feed into research that space agencies are carrying out to try to determine whether one day astronauts could grow their own food in space.

Space seed

"For years, scientists have been researching whether the human race can survive on another planet in the future. In order to do this, we need to grow food in space and we need your help," he said in a video to promote the project.

"We are calling this special mission 'Rocket Science' and we can't do it without you," he added.

According to Alistair Griffiths, who is the RHS's scientific director, "the plan is to have a mass participation with schools".

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Each astronaut on the ISS requires 5kg of food and water each day, according to the European Space Agency (Esa). They receive regular supplies from Earth.

But it would be incredibly expensive to do this for a permanent human colony on the Moon and would not be at all realistic for a return trip to Mars. The UKSA's Jeremy Curtis said that the proposed seed experiment would help in the development of food that could be grown in space.