6/29/2010, By Wang Xiang Shanghai Daily, A UNIVERSITY in Guangdong Province is offering a 100,000-yuan reward (US$14,726) for growing an apple tree in south China's hot climate from a cutting from the tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravity.

The cutting was donated to Shantou University by Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing who had been given it by Cambridge University, China News Service reported yesterday.

But the campus of Shantou University in Guangdong is too hot for apple trees to grow. The university said the reward had attracted over 500 ideas of how to successfully grow the tree since last month.

A forestry scientist Zhang Jianguo said it was possible to grow apple trees in south China but it was clearly a waste of money to build a greenhouse just for one apple tree.

At present, the cutting is still at Trinity College in Cambridge, waiting for Shantou University's final decision to move it to China.

This May, a fragment of Newton's apple tree was on a journey into space on United States shuttle Atlantis. The stunt was dubbed as a unique test of the scientist's theory of gravity.