What do you know about the success or otherwise of attempts to grow plants in space?
eg. Review and analysis of over 40 years of space plant growth systems
Some issues that have come up are:
- Different gene expression in space-grown plants, the epigenetic switches are all different.
- Root growth seems to work OK, provided there is a carefully controlled nutrient gradient in the growth medium.
- Stem growth seems to be OK, for some plants.
- Seed production is poor, some experiments produced no seed, non-viable seed or up to 50% viable seed.
- Risk of pathogenic microbes on space grown plants has to be taken seriously.
ADVASC did well with seeds, managing two full generations of arabidopsis and one full generation of soybean with produced seed germination rates comparable to those on Earth.
On August 10 in 2015 astronauts were, for the first time ever, officially allowed to eat their space-grown vegetables.
The whole set of experiments can be seen as slowly working towards a protocol for the optimal growth, seed viability and sterilisation of space-based plants.