Sunday Supplement: What Does Mickey Mouse Have To Do With Space Plants?
Sunday Supplement: What Does Mickey Mouse Have To Do With Space Plants?
Where can tourists take a relaxing boat ride through a working plant biotech laboratory?
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Tour boats carrying 40 people at a time travel through the first working plant biotech lab completely open to the public. Visitors can watch technicians working just a few feet away, growing whole pineapple, peanut, vanilla, strawberry, carrot, and potato plants from cells or sections of leaf tissue. Strawberry and pineapple plantlets ride on shaker tables designed to aerate their liquid growing medium, while 12-gallon bottles rotate constantly, filled with thousands of pre-embryonic plant cells. This 500-square-foot area nurtures over 1 million plantlets at a time.
Where are we? The Happiest Place on Earth.
A few years ago, I discovered that NASA plant science was on display at Walt Disney World, visible to visitors taking a boat ride through The Land pavilion at Epcot.
The first part of the ride is a theme-park-style attraction with animatronics, light and sound effects, and heat, wind and mist to explore the idea of biomes. Then the boat emerges into the "Living Laboratory", a series of greenhouses showcasing futuristic agriculture techniques.
The Living Laboratory is also home to the USDA Biotechnology Lab, where several USDA scientists do research on crop improvement.
Maybe one day I'll get to visit, but for the moment I can enjoy it vicariously, digging through the archives to go behind the scenes and find fun things that have happened there!
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