Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 7 May 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got intercropping on Mars, a space agriculture graphic novel and Shenzhou-17 bringing space seeds back to Earth.
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
If humans are ever going to live on Mars, then we need to be able to grow our own food there sustainably. Importing food, soil or fertilizer from Earth just isn’t going to work long term. GotG friend Wieger Wamelinkand his team at Wageningen University have been exploring whether an age-old Earth gardening technique – intercropping – could be the key to sustaining life on Mars.
As I wrote (long ago) in my book The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A-Z:
“Intercropping, undercropping catch cropping and double cropping are all slightly different ways of doing the same thing – growing more than one crop in the same space and thereby increasing harvests.
…
The Native Americans had an intercropping technique known as the Three Sisters. They planted squash, sweetcorn and beans in the same beds. The sweetcorn provides tall stems for the beans to climb up; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil to feel all three crops; and the squash rambles along the ground as a living mulch.”
To see whether intercropping might work on Mars, the team planted up two sets of small pots in their greenhouse – filled with Martian regolith simulant, sand or regular potting soil. Each pot was planted with tomatoes, carrots, and peas (all of which have successfully grown in regolith in past studies). Intercropping isn’t as simple as cramming more plants into the same space – some species are more competitive than others.
In this case, the presence of the peas and carrots helped the tomatoes – they grew bigger and had more potassium. But the yield of both carrots and peas decreased.
The overall yield from the intercropping system in simulated regolith was slightly lower than for monocropping, and this is likely because the peas did not manage to form the symbiotic relationship needed to fix nitrogen into the soil.
The regolith on Mars will vary with location, so the solution may be as simple as selecting regolith that’s more suitable to cultivation. However, future Martians should also consider making compost, a simple Earth technique for improving the soil.
Cooper, Emma. The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A-Z. Permanent Publications, 2009.
Gonçalves, Rebeca, et al. "Intercropping on Mars: A promising system to optimise fresh food production in future martian colonies." PloS one 19.5 (2024): e0302149. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0302149
Speaking of Wieger Wamelink, he’s been working with artist Anna Vershinina on a project to bridge the gap between art and bioscience. ExoGARDEN is an installation of stacked 3D-printed flower pots, a modular system of vertical farming, intended for growing vegetables in extreme locations, such as Mars and Antarctica.ExoGARDEN won last year’s BAD Award, and has also given rise to a graphic novel with visions of the future.
Read more: Stripboek over ruimtetuinen, ExoGARDEN, EXO GARDEN: Visions of a New World. And you can buy the graphic novel from the Food for Mars & Moon website.
In other news…
The Choctaw Native American heritage seeds that launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX CRS-29 have come back to Earth on CRS-30. Choctaw students will plant the space-flown seeds alongside seeds that remained on Earth. They will make predictions about the growth of the seeds and observe the plants as they develop. The goal of the project is to inspire Native American students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
Read more: Space-Made Fibers and Novel Biotech Among Research Returning to Earth After Successful Space Station Mission
Seeds, including alfalfa and oats, that spend nearly a year on Tiangong as part of the Shenzhou-17 mission are now safely back on Earth. Researchers have initiated germination tests and plan to perform extensive breeding experiments aimed at developing high-yield, high-quality, and more resilient forage varieties. The same team has already developed three new alfalfa varieties and one new oat variety through space-mutation breeding, which are now being implemented in agricultural production.
Read more: Seeds from China's space station tested in agricultural experiments
Russian scientists are working on a space farm for growing oyster mushrooms. According to City Farmer Ru, Russia plants to resume its lunar program by 2035, including a lunar base with a farm growing edible plants and mushrooms. The proposed mushroom cultivation facility would be capable of producing up to 28 kg of mushrooms in 66 days.
Read more: В России создали проект лунной фермы для выращивания вешенок
Students and faculty at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) have been working on a project investigating how plants grow outside of Earth’s atmosphere. They’ve developed a prototype growth chamber in a CubeSat, which they launched on a high-altitude balloon. Their future plans include launching the CubeSat into space.
Read more: Florida Atlantic University selected for NASA nanosatellite project
For the moment, Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system, and Gardeners of the Galaxy is proudly powered by renewable energy via Ecotricity. If you're in the UK and you make the switch to Ecotricity using my code (RAF-6DRP5) before 31 May 2024, you can get up to £50 in credit on your account (£25 per fuel).
Boeing’s Starliner didn’t launch as planned for its crewed test flight. Scrubbed two hours before lift off due a potential issue with an oxygen relief valve, Friday is now the earliest there will be another attempt. While we wait, BBC Future explores what a successful Starliner debut would mean for the future of US space travel.
Read more: Starliner: The US space industry's next big thing?
Fix & Fogg, the premium nut butter brand from Wellington, has made history by being the first New Zealand food producer to venture into space with NASA. Fifty specially-designed pouches of Fix & Fogg launched to the ISS on a SpaceX resupply mission, ensuring NASA’s astronauts can enjoy a home comfort in space.
Read more: Wellington nut butter to travel into space with NASA astronauts
Sicilian company Damiano is celebrating its 60th birthday with a new futuristic goal: to "space-ify" its products (almonds, hazelnuts, and dried fruits), and send them into space as food for astronauts.
Read more: La frutta secca siciliana vola nello spazio e diventa cibo per gli astronauti
Slovenian students have won third place in the NASA HUNCH Culinary Challenge, a competition where students come up with innovative meals for astronauts. Tasked with preparing a savoury breakfast with at least one vegetable, students from BIC Ljubljana created a dish with barley groats, a Slovenian staple, that they combined with dried pears, walnuts and smoked tofu.
Read more: Third place for Slovenians in astronaut food cup
The emissions-reducing potential of alternative proteins might just save our planetary bacon. But where does faux fish fit into the mix? Singapore-based Avant Meats has created the world’s first lab-cultured fish fillets, envisaging a future where tucking into a fish supper no longer means depleting our under-threat oceans.
Read more: Lab-cultured fish: the newest alt-protein making a splash
Scientists are debating whether concepts such as memory, consciousness, and communication can be applied beyond the animal kingdom.
Read more: The Mysteries of Plant ‘Intelligence’
Scientists are hopeful of the potential the tree of life has for biodiversity research. Each plant's location on the tree of life allows scientists to study its properties, similar to how an element can be studied by its position on the periodic table, the study authors wrote.
Read more: Darwin's 'Abominable Mystery' Haunts New Plant Tree of Life
Botanists have found that plants communicate to each other about threats, manipulate animals to their own advantage, and can react to the sound of a predator caterpillar chewing. Some plants can even count. At what point could this be deemed conscious behaviour?
Read more: Should plants be given rights? What new botanical breakthroughs could mean.
Renegade gardeners across the world are embracing a new philosophy: gardening that prioritises insects, not plants.
Read more: Why you should let insects eat your plants
Africa’s “forgotten” food crops could support more climate-resilient and healthful food systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but the promotion of these crops has received limited attention. Projecting forward to the year 2070, researchers showed that a prioritized collection of these crops, differentiated by food groups, has high potential to diversify cropping systems of major staples to support climate-resilience and nutrition in the SSA region.
Read more: Forgotten food crops in sub-Saharan Africa for healthy diets in a changing climate
Strawberry-themed festivities date back to the 18th-century French fête champêtre. These rural festivals were elaborate parties with a countryside theme, held outdoors. Hosts realized that, in a rapidly industrializing world, “natural and simple” activities such as strawberry picking were a great idea for parties.
Read more: The 19th-Century ‘Strawberry Parties’ That Raised Money and Spirits Each Spring
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Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)