NASA Grows Plants in Space: Next Frontier for Agriculture

First Posted: Jul 17, 2015 10:59 AM EDT

Imagine if we could grow plants in space. It would make long-term space travel much more viable, and could even be important to human colonies based on other worlds. Now, scientists have managed to show that growing plants in space is, in fact, possible.

During three recent experiments, NASA scientists sent plants to the International Space Station to test the theories of two researchers named Anna-Lisa Paul and Robert Ferl. They wanted to see exactly how plants sense changes in their environment and then respond to those changes.

"One of the first things we found was that certain types of root-growth strategies that plants use on Earth were always thought to require gravity for guidance actually do not require gravity at all, as we saw plants use those same strategies on the space station," said Paul in a news release.

In fact, the results led to a new hypothesis. In the absence of gravity, light actually plays a bigger role in guiding plant roots.

The researchers also found that plants grow in space by adjusting their basic metabolism, and there was a big difference in how various plant parts respond to space flight. They also found that changes in gene expression in different parts of plants that guide proteins plants use to run basic machinery was also different in space.

"One of the most versatile tools we use in almost all of our space flight experiments are Arabidopsis plants, engineered with glowing fluorescent proteins that can 'report' how they are responding to their environment," said Ferl. "We can follow how the plant is using those fluorescent proteins in adjusting to their new environment by using specialized cameras and microscopes."