Latest / Hydroponics Daily / The International Space Station has a big Hydroponic Headache!

Transcript

The International Space Station has a big Hydroponic Headache! · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello, hello, hello, or welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast
• 0:04
  for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp of Utrema Limited, and we make interesting
• 0:11
  fertilisers, novel biostimulants, and organic biopesticides here in the UK,
• 0:15
  but we also sell all around the world.
• 0:18
  And today's topic is really interesting. The episode is going to be about growing crops in space.
• 0:24
  Now, I've done Mars, I think, in the past, probably done the Moon,
• 0:27
  but space is a novel one and this is actual research that's come out of nasa
• 0:31
  and published in nature so you don't get more prestigious than that nature is
• 0:36
  the number one journal for,
• 0:40
  natural sciences should we say alongside science
• 0:43
  journal and nasa is nasa everyone
• 0:46
  knows nasa so what they found well they we've all thought that you know growing
• 0:50
  crops in space is you know to be the thing to do but they cultivated crops on
• 0:56
  the international space station and the iss and they found that the lettuce
• 1:02
  cultivated in orbit contained.
• 1:05
  Approximately 30% less calcium and approximately 25% less magnesium than its
• 1:11
  Earth-grown counterpart, alongside variations in iron and potassium levels.
• 1:16
  Now, this is important because when you think about the human body,
• 1:21
  it loses bone density and bone strength in space.
• 1:27
  In microgravity and zero gravity, you're going beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
• 1:31
  Earth's gravitational field, sorry. And so you're going to need calcium-rich
• 1:36
  food. And so this is going to be an issue.
• 1:39
  Now, I'll look into, I have not done much research into this topic.
• 1:43
  I would imagine it's probably due to the humidity on the ISS and lack of evapotranspiration,
• 1:48
  the fact they're using LED lights, and they're probably using bog-standard hydroponic
• 1:53
  fertilizers rather than liquid gold or gold leaf as it's called in the US,
• 1:57
  which would be loads of calcium, especially if you used a calcium car mag with it.
• 2:01
  So let's do some research into this and find out just what is going on on the
• 2:05
  International Space Station.
• 2:07
  Well, it looks like the situation is even worse because the space-grown plants
• 2:13
  also had fewer protective molecules and more stress compounds affecting flavour
• 2:19
  and nutritional density.
• 2:20
  So probably more astringent taste, but also less.
• 2:24
  Antioxidants, the antioxidant levels.
• 2:27
  So astronauts undergo genetic and metabolic changes in space,
• 2:32
  so they are receiving more,
• 2:35
  radiation from the sun because they're not protected by the
• 2:38
  earth's atmosphere then they could be
• 2:40
  that could be a real issue and so that combined
• 2:44
  with the bone density issue and some some
• 2:47
  astronauts exhibit signs of a leaky gut a condition
• 2:51
  that impairs nutrient absorption and increases inflammation so
• 2:54
  it makes that makes it even worse so that
• 2:58
  could be a real issue and it's they've the
• 3:01
  scientists have put it down to microgravity changing how plants
• 3:04
  absorb nutrients and distribute water and respond
• 3:07
  to oxidative stress i'll have
• 3:10
  to look into it see if they mean they compared it to a similar
• 3:13
  growing environment on earth i'm sure
• 3:16
  they did because this is published in nature so that would be one
• 3:19
  of the big issues so microgravity really having
• 3:23
  a an effect that wasn't expected or certainly wasn't obvious might have been
• 3:29
  of you know some of the boffins might have expected it so what they're going
• 3:33
  to do about it because you can't just say right we can't travel in space because
• 3:36
  of this we've got to get to mars you know elon wants us to go to mars so we're
• 3:40
  going to get there so what they're going to do they're going to look at.
• 3:42
  Bioengineering so i'd imagine like gm crops biofortification can you use things
• 3:46
  like novel fertilizer technologies to get the calcium the magnesium the iron
• 3:50
  levels in there and look at flavonoid-rich
• 3:53
  plants to increase the body's ability to combat that stress,
• 4:00
  the radiation stress and the other stresses of being in space.
• 4:03
  So the flavonoid-rich plants, that might mean that they're switching out lettuce
• 4:07
  for spinach or kale or maybe tea, apples and citrus, all high in flavonoids,
• 4:15
  which are really good at.
• 4:17
  Combating stress let's see if we can find the actual nature article
• 4:20
  because normally nature articles are free to read so
• 4:24
  we'll open that up and see if we've found more information about the materials
• 4:27
  and methods used in this trial well that took me longer than it should have
• 4:30
  because it's not actually published in the journal nature it's published in
• 4:34
  one of the nature's subsidiary journals called npga microgravity which doesn't
• 4:40
  have the same kudos but it's still a very good journal so.
• 4:44
  Bad-mouthed it too much. So the actual article wasn't what I was expecting.
• 4:48
  It wasn't really a, this is the methods, this is the results,
• 4:51
  and this is the discussion.
• 4:52
  It was a meta-analysis of a few different studies.
• 4:56
  So I'm going to assume that the control treatment on Earth was the same environment,
• 5:00
  and that it was the microgravity that was causing the reduction in nutrients,
• 5:03
  which makes for a good story.
• 5:05
  So hopefully they did proper scientific marriage. I'm sure they did,
• 5:08
  at the expense of putting an experiment on the International Space Station.
• 5:11
  Now what's interesting really apart from the leaky gut syndrome which sounds
• 5:16
  disgusting doesn't it a bit like you know when people eat when they used to
• 5:20
  develop those crisps that you couldn't absorb the fat from them so they're really
• 5:24
  good if you were dieting but turns out they gave everyone.
• 5:28
  What was described in the news as anal leakage leaky
• 5:32
  gut syndrome seems like that like diarrhea on the ISS I
• 5:35
  couldn't think of anything worse apart from that there
• 5:38
  is a graph that was that there is a table that
• 5:41
  gives you all of the nutrient breakdown
• 5:44
  of the crops that are space relevant so
• 5:47
  those that have been proposed for growing in any
• 5:51
  space mission and what's surprising is
• 5:54
  the one that seems to be really good is soya beans and
• 5:57
  soya beans like we talked about yesterday in
• 6:01
  when we talked about adami is that they're
• 6:04
  a legume and they're also a short stocky legume
• 6:07
  and so they could potentially be grown in
• 6:11
  vertical farms but obviously they're a low value crop in in
• 6:14
  on earth but if you can get crazy high
• 6:18
  levels of so then so the calcium
• 6:21
  level for example in lettuce 36 milligrams per 100 gram in soybeans 277 and
• 6:30
  that's repeated across the board and it is a you know it's a seed so obviously
• 6:33
  that's more relevant but that's really interesting there's a lot of research
• 6:37
  that's been done on soybeans and a lot of GM soybeans as well.
• 6:41
  That is particularly interesting so that graph was really interesting flax was
• 6:45
  really high in calcium as well as was sunflower seeds so basically seed is high in,
• 6:51
  wheat it's high in magnesium as well so just looking through the data there a bit like,
• 6:58
  you know rain man though here it's not not great so yeah
• 7:02
  that's particularly interesting so yeah potentially
• 7:05
  soybeans on crop on space missions rather
• 7:08
  than lettuce from now on although pollination would be
• 7:11
  a bit difficult but can bumblebees fly in microgravity there
• 7:15
  is a question for you can a bumblebee fly in
• 7:18
  microgravity answers on a postcard to you
• 7:21
  tremer limited daventry england also
• 7:25
  when we talk about legume crops i wonder if peanuts can
• 7:28
  be grown hydroponically i am going to look at that tomorrow because peanuts
• 7:31
  are unusual because they they sort of bury their peanut
• 7:34
  underground the one sort of fruit that you
• 7:37
  get underground but can you grow them hydroponically and
• 7:40
  say rockwool or ebon flood and
• 7:43
  then and then harvest them easier rather than digging up
• 7:46
  the soil and better for regenerative and protecting the soil i
• 7:49
  don't know i'm going to do three legume topics.
• 7:52
  In a row on this podcast the other advantage of
• 7:55
  soybeans as we said is that they absorb nitrogen from
• 7:58
  the air and so you wouldn't need nitrogen fertilizer
• 8:01
  if you were going to mars so cut down
• 8:05
  you would need a big harbor bosch factory on mars
• 8:08
  or in space so but probably
• 8:11
  the least of your worries all right that's enough waffle for today
• 8:14
  if you found this interesting at all please get in touch if you've got any questions leave
• 8:17
  us an apple podcast review that really helps spread the podcast
• 8:21
  we got to number 22 in the gardening
• 8:24
  podcast charts in the uk which made my
• 8:27
  day but we can get higher it's terrible rain
• 8:30
  here in the uk it's driving down it's awful all the roads are flooded the motorways
• 8:35
  are closed which means no one's in the garden and no one's listening to gardening
• 8:39
  podcasts so you can leave us a rated review and and this is the time to strike
• 8:44
  and increase the hydroponic daily and get hydroponics into the news and into the charts.
• 8:49
  If you're not on Apple Podcast, don't bother leaving a review because it doesn't help with any charts.
• 8:54
  But just make sure you follow the podcast and check out utreema.co.uk because
• 8:58
  you might find something really interesting,
• 9:00
  and we sell mainly in the uk but we do have distributors abroad
• 9:04
  so if you're listening to this abroad and you're in a position to
• 9:06
  distribute products then get in touch we're always happy to speak to
• 9:09
  new people and yeah we got some exciting events i'm going to plan for all our
• 9:15
  distributors soon here in the uk i want to do a meetup like either the royal
• 9:20
  horticultural society or q gardens and have a meeting and talk strategy and
• 9:25
  things like that and have a nice walk around some gardens.
• 9:27
  All right. That's enough waffle for me today. I'm really grateful for you listening
• 9:30
  to Hedgeponics Daily. I'm going to go to the pub because it's Friday evening.
• 9:35
  All right. Ta-ra. See you tomorrow. Goodbye.