Plants are the natural oxygen factories. And growing this natural factories in space is the emerging field of research nowadays. Growing plants in space is important for various reasons which includes aesthetic perspective, psychological well being of the astronauts and also for maintaining the good health of astronauts during the long duration missions. Space food generally provided to the astronauts is in the form of packed food or usually the resupply mission is carried out to provide the food for the crew members. But if the long duration mission is there then some of the difficulties arises such as the basic nutrition which is important for the astronauts health including vitamins get degraded over the time in the packed food and astronauts will not get the required nutrition. Here comes the need of growing the plants in the space to provide fresh food to the astronauts as well as to open the doors of implanting this oxygen factories on the other planets which is our first step in terraforming the planet for the survival of life.
The research on growing plants in space in not new, the first plants which was grown and flowered in space in controlled environment is the Arabidopsis thaliana, the ideal model plant in 1982. The most important factors affecting the growth of plant in space is microgravity, availability of the minerals, availability of optimum sunlight etc.
The Study of plants in space was mainly conducted at the International Space station (ISS) which is a large habitable satellite situated in low Earth orbit. It is jointly operated by five space agencies and fifteen countries. To overcome the affecting factors NASA has designed some chambers in the ISS such as Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), the plant growth chamber with the controlled environment. The another initiative of NASA towards this is the Vegetable Production System commonly known as Veggie. And veggie has successfully grown many plants in this system such as lettuce, chinese cabbage, zinnia flower etc.
Fig 1. Plant in space
(Source:https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/veggie-plant-growth-system-activated-on-international-space-station/)
The research was carried out to study the effect of gravity on the growth of plant and it shows that the gravity is affecting the development of leaves, plant cell, chloroplast content and photosynthesis which ultimately affecting the complete growth. The another important thing to discuss is the effect of space environment on the genetic level of plants in which the functions of genes get affected and it will result in some different outcomes then the predicted one. Such as the research was done to study the lignin composition in plants which grown in space as lignin was playing the role like bones because it is responsible for the skeleton of plant cell. If the lignin composition get affected then ultimately plant growth also gets affected.
The research on the growth of plants in space is opening the doors of opportunity for the emerging astrobiologist minds to discover this mystery of plants in space.
References: 1.https://www.nasa.gov/exploration-research-and-technology/growing-plants-in-space/
3.https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/
4.https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/iss-research/iss-fcf/fluid-science/apex/
-Vallari Gaisamudre