By Prarthana Mitra
In a previously unimaginable feat, a group of engineers and researchers stationed at the otherwise barren snowscape of Antarctica, have recently grown salad vegetables through a specially designed hydroponic system. The new research takes us one step closer to perfecting off-world farming.
Working out of a greenhouse called the EDEN-ISS, which is around the size of shipping-container, the scientists in Germany’s Neumayer Station III announced the news of their successful harvest, which includes a whopping 3.6 kg of salad greens, 18 cucumbers, and 70 radishes.
The seeds were sown in the greenhouse in mid-February, engineer Paul Zabel told AP. More importantly, the plants were all produced without soil, sunlight, or pesticides, using a hydroponic system. It employs a reusable water cycle and a nutrient system. The system also makes use of LED lighting for photosynthesis and can monitore emissions of carbon dioxide, thus creating the optimal conditions for germination.
Research may help future space colonisers grow food on other planets
The research, reports DW, follows in the footsteps of successful US operations cultivating crops in the harsh climate. Although the ISS had previously grown space vegetables back in 2015, Germanys attempt has been a more ambitious project, with photographs from the station showing healthy tufts of lettuce, Swiss chard, mustard greens, cilantro, basil, parsley, chives, arugula, and red radishes.
At the South Pole, where temperatures usually drop below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), it is truly a miracle that the researchers managed to create a conducive environment for growing such a wide range of vegetables. Despite facing several obstacles, such as system failures and the most severe blizzard in over a year, the results were quite encouraging, and has led the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), which oversaw the research, to hope for a net harvest of four to five kilograms of vegetables a week by May.
The goal of the research is to find possible ways to cultivate food for human missions in space. The Antarctic station provided scientists with the perfect environment to simulate the hostile and isolated conditions of outer space.
We have learned a lot about self-sufficient plant breeding in the last few weeks, it has become clear that Antarctica is an ideal test field for our research, project manager Daniel Schubert told DW.
Meanwhile, the team of scientists in Antarctica are overjoyed with their crop yield and are probably settling down for a green leafy dinner as we speak.