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Potato Research Crucial to Life On Mars
Before it can send astronauts to Mars, NASA needs to figure out how
to feed them there. To work that out, the US space agency teamed up
with a research group in Peru focused exclusively on spud research.
The International Potato Center (known by its Spanish acronym, CIP),
is dedicated to understanding how tubers like potatoes can grow and
eventually feed everyone here on Earth—but also potentially space travelers
to Mars. Last week, CIP announced that after a year, it had been able to
successfully grow potatoes in a plot of land engineered to mimic Mars’
harsh environment. “We want to know what the minimum conditions are that
a potato needs to survive,” said Julio Valdivia-Silva, a University of Engineering
and Technology-Lima engineer who worked on the “Potatoes on Mars” project. In
February 2016, engineers created a small plot of land imitating a version of Martian
climate where plants could possibly grow. After a year, the team reported they had
successfully grown a small crop of potatoes—meaning they could probably grow on Mars, too.
- qz.com
Military-grade Technology to Monitor Eggplants Rather Than Explosives
On a rooftop in the Jewish-Arab Tel Aviv neighbourhood of Jaffa, Israel, a former military
technologist and an ex-journalist sit in a transparent bio-dome where their robot is busy learning
how to grow food. Flux IoT’s Eddy, a robot measuring less than a foot tall and resembling a life
buoy, is built with military-grade sensors and armed with image-processing technology.
Its inventors intend it to become the industry standard for commercial
and amateur indoor farmers who want to grow pesticide-free, water-
efficient crops via hydroponics. Eddy sits in the growing reservoir,
and users can stay updated on their crops’ progress via a mobile
app, where information gleaned from fellow farmers can help them
know when to change the lighting or add nutrients. Thieme
Hennis, head of the Space Farm Collective, is testing out Eddy
to see how it might help a citizen science project called Watch
Me Grow, aimed at finding plants that will grow best in space,
and improve ways even the public can
grow their own food on Earth.
- stuff.co.nz
Researchers Use Infrared Light to Explore Fungal Associations
Tiny strands of fungi weave through the roots of an estimated nine out of 10 plants on
Earth, an underground symbiosis in which the plant gives the fungus pre-made sugars
and the fungus sends the plant basic nutrients in return. Scientists at Stony Brook
University, the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory,
and the University of Alabama, among others, are interested in enhancing
this mechanism as a way to help plants grow on nutrient-poor lands. Their
success could lead to increased production of plant-based biofuels without
having to compete with food crops for fertile farmland. “We use an infrared
microscope to follow the distribution of nutrients such as nitrogen and
carbon within the plant’s rhizosphere, which is the section of soil closest to
the plants roots, to try to understand how the fungus actually changes this
nutrient distribution to facilitate the plant’s growth,” explains Tiffany Victor,
a PhD student from Stony Brook University.
- phys.org
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