The (space) science of Vegetables

[Sasami_TN]

The future of vegetables in spaceflight

NASA released a statement saying that of all the vegetables they have worked with, that the sweet potato would most likely be the go-to vegetable of choice for astronauts because it's packed full of vitamins and minerals. My thoughts were that there is just so much (ie: very little) that you can do with a sweet potato as it turns to mush. So I was wondering what type of research can be done in concern of vegetative growth in space.

Possible (MOD) projects:

1. Hydroponic module to test how much water is actually needed in a microgravity environment and if a sealed moist environment would promote good vegetative growth without the need of an actual supply of water at the roots.

2. Sunlight requirements. Which filtered glass color on a module greenhouse would promote plant growth and which colors hinder plant growth.

3. Fruit sugar research: Would growing fruit in a micro-gravity environment change the natural development of fruit sugars in the plant. Like would oranges be bitter or super sweet?

4. Ambient radiation effects on plant tissue: Research potential to see what effects that ambient space radiation would have on living plant tissue (which need sunlight) and to see if later generations of the plant adapts genetically adapts to the radiation.

5. Growth potential of plants: Is there a standard increase in size of a vegetable grown in micro-gravity versus regular growth on Earth? I think we should measure plant growth to see if there is indeed a statistical growth standard.

(post your research idea's on how we can study plants in space)

-Sasami (^___^)/

Edited November 30, 2014 by Sasami_TN

[EzinX]

All of the things are fairly well known to biology and don't need a lot of expensive space-specific research. At the cellular level, gravity is a negligible force, and most of your questions can be trivially answered with ground experiments or just checking the literature for past research. More useful research would be full up testing - using what we already know about plants, and using what we already know about recycling systems, build an actual life support recycling system and test it on the ground heavily. Then, once the design is reliable in testing on the ground, launch one into space and test it there.

[QuesoExplosivo]

At the cellular level, gravity is a negligible force

It's not negligible (gravitropism, for instance), but most plants do fine without it. Example: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121207-plants-grow-space-station-science/

[Sasami_TN]

.. it would be a good thought that while astronauts are growing their own food crops in space (I still think they need a module for food on the ISS), that they can measure growth, track water usage, crop yields, flavor consistency, and other things which planetside researchers may not be able to replicate (microgravity and ambient radiation environment wise). While into this first posting, the idea occurred to me that successive plant generations grown in a radioactive environment may show genetic adaptation in a way that researchers might could learn from toward applying that knowledge for astronaut travel in space. The plants around Chernobyl can be a reference source, but there are other forms of radiation in space that could affect plants at the cellular level. It would be a nice bonus to find out that plants can heal themselves of a form of cellular "cancer" and apply that toward a human cure of cancer. Groundbreaking idea's can sometimes come from the most simple and unobtrusive sources, such as plants.

-Sasami (^___^)/

[Steambirds]

I'd say one of the hardest parts of managing hydroponics in space is the immense water consumption of plants.

[Idobox]

I'd say one of the hardest parts of managing hydroponics in space is the immense water consumption of plants.

I'd say it's the difficulty of keeping water contained in microgravity.

Plants use a lot of water that they then release in the atmosphere where it will be extracted and recycled, which already happens for the water we humans release.