Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report: 26 March 2024
Your weekly round-up of astrobotany news and adventure. This week we've got mutant space mustard, an Astrobiology primer, Antarctic mosses, no-kill meat and weird bananas!
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy! Welcome to this week's Mission Report.
Dr Simon Gilroy at UW-Madison joined the Perpetual Notion Machine on WORT FM, a Madison Community Radio station, to talk about growing plants in space and TASTIE (Trichoderma Associated Space Tomato Inoculation Experiment), the experiment exploring whether a fungus can help plants grow in space:
Original source: Space Tomatoes, How Plants Grow Without Gravity with Dr. Simon Gilroy.
Seeds flown on the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft have arrived back at the Chongqing Academy Of Agricultural Sciences' Institute of Vegetables after spending 155 days in space. The species include mung beans, tomatoes, rapeseed, rice, and Er Cai seeds, characteristic of the Sichuan and Chongqing regions. (I had to look up 'Er Cai', and it's a very interesting-looking 'mutant mustard', forming big buds that are a bit like Brussels sprouts/flower spouts/Kalettes.)
Read more: Germplasm Resources Return to Chongqing After 155-Day Space Journey.
The Daily Illini (the independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois) has an article on Prof Ying Diao and her team, who have been working with NASA on SPEARS2 — a stretchable-polymer-electronics-based autonomous remote strain sensor that can continuously and remotely track plant growth.
Read more: Revolutionizing plant growth: UI scientists leap toward outer-space farming.
Siyeon Joo is a junior at the Episcopal School of Acadiana. She's currently investigating Lyngbya cyanobacteria to see if there are any medicinal uses that could be useful in space.
Read more: Martin high schooler's research on health in space.
Danish chef Rasmus Munk plans to serve up a stratospheric dining experience in 2025, aboard Space Perspective Spaceship Neptune, the world's first carbon-neutral spaceship. And it's a steal, at just $495,000 per ticket!
Read more: Danish chef to launch gourmet dining to stratosphere.
The Astrobiology journal has published a new edition of its free Astrobiology primer, covering everything from What is Life? and Major Biological Innovations in the History of Life on Earth through to Life as We Don't Know it.
Find it: The Astrobiology Primer 3.0.
Assuming companies obtain the necessary approvals and can sufficiently scale up production, no-kill meat could become a mainstay on restaurant menus in the coming years. But what might such a meal look like? Biologists and chefs share their ideas.
Read more: From lab to plate: a six-course banquet featuring no-kill dim sum and steak frites.
While researchers know that space travel can stress space crew members both physically and mentally and test their ability to work together in close quarters, missions to Mars will amplify these challenges.
Read more: The psychological barrier of deep space exploration.
China's advancements in lunar exploration are entering a new phase, focusing on the moon's resources and the potential for human habitation. With two robots currently operational on the lunar surface, the country has outlined a comprehensive plan to harness the moon's resources, notably aiming to retrieve samples from its far side.
Read more: China's Lunar Program Unveils Vision for Moon's Resource Utilization and Human Settlements.
Grist has a round-up of biomaterials - from apple waste to artificial spider silk - that are already on the market, offering a glimpse of a plastic-free future for our textiles.
Read more: Apple waste, spider silk, enhanced cotton: How bio-based textiles could replace plastic in our clothing.
The European mission control centre near Munich, Germany, is set to transform into a Moon mission control centre, tasked with supporting operations for missions to a lunar space station, the lunar surface and beyond.
Read more: From Munich to the Moon.
Heritage apple trees at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) garden Rosemoor will be sampled this spring to find species of apple enjoyed by people hundreds of years ago. The University of Bristol and the craft cider maker Sandford Orchards will receive the genotype of apples from rare and important orchards across England and specifically look at "survivor varieties" that have not previously been recorded. RHS Rosemoor’s Devon Collection orchard is of particular interest to this project because it includes cultivars not previously held in the National Collection at Brogdale or in RHS collections. Some of those cultivars in the Devon Collection which had not previously been recorded include ‘Don’s Delight’, ‘Payhembury’, ‘Quarry Apple’, ‘Spotted Dick’ and ‘White Close Pippin’. Some trees may be the last of their kind, and their unique genetic code could be preserved as a result of the project.
Read more: UK genetics project looks for lost apple varieties to protect fruit in climate crisis.
Plant specimens collected by Charles Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle have been unearthed in an archive at Cambridge University.
The rare specimens, which have been stored in the archives of the Cambridge University herbarium for nearly 200 years, are now going to be unveiled to the public.
Read more: Darwin's plant specimens stored for 200 years to go on public display and Rarely seen 200 year-old plant specimens Darwin sent from Voyage of the Beagle on display for new TV show.
By analysing herbarium specimens, scientists found new plants that take rare earth elements from the ground, which could help get more of these important metals more sustainably.
Read more: Green Goldmine: The Surprising Role of Plants in Rare Earth Element Accumulation.
Most people don't question why every banana they've ever eaten looks and tastes pretty much the same. Most of us will never try a blue java from Indonesia with its soft, unctuous texture and flavour of vanilla ice cream, or the Chinese banana that is so aromatic it's named go san heong, meaning "you can smell it from the next mountain".
Read more: There are more than 1,000 varieties of banana, and we eat one of them. Here’s why that's absurd.
Mosses are the plant superheroes of Antarctica, building up into plump green cushions or even deep banks on bare ground.
Read more: Plantwatch: how does moss survive and thrive in harsh Antarctic climate?
Roots are typically at least half of a plant's biomass, but you wouldn't know it given how little scientific research has been devoted to these critical tendrils. But now a scientific renaissance for root systems has been fueled by a combination of technological advances and a striking realisation: Roots, we now know, can help us track our changing world, shape food security and model our future.
Read more: These Researchers Are Digging Into the Understudied Science of Roots.
Antarctica is a bleak, remote and dark place during the winter, but a handful of people each year brave the conditions to live in almost totally cut off from the rest of the world. The experience can change how they speak.
Read more: Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began to develop their own accent.
A research team from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) in Cologne has now investigated the three-dimensional microbiota structure around plant roots.
Read more: Investigating the three-dimensional structure of symbiotic communities around plant roots.
Jones Food Company (JFC) has spent years perfecting the technology behind vertical farming. It uses robots as well as artificial intelligence, feeding data for temperature, humidity, nutrient levels and plant growth into a machine learning programme, to optimise plant cultivation.
Read more: Shallow roots: can UK vertical farms keep growing as foreign rivals shrivel?
Thank you for reading the Gardeners of the Galaxy Mission Report — your support allows me to keep doing this work. You can now earn premium access by inviting friends and colleagues to subscribe and read.
I'll be back in your inboxes next week. Thanks for reading and being part of the Gardeners of the Galaxy community.
Ex solo ad astra,
Emma (Space Gardener)