Plants Appear to do BETTER in Spaceships Than on Earth!

[Tuckerfan]

Lettuce grown in low-pressure environment does better than that in a normal pressure environment. All kinds of better, too. Looks like not only could astronauts expect more food from their plants, but also more oxygen.

Effect of low pressure [(LPS) at 50kPa] on growth of lettuce and wheat seedlings. Notice that the lettuce seedling (left) has greater shoot and root growth than the ambient (100 kPa) lettuce plant, whereas the wheat plant (right) is only slightly larger (+10%) at low pressure (He et al., 2003).

Woohoo!

[Sage_Rat]

I think I recall that plants get messed up in zero-g though.

Though one has to wonder if now all the lettuce farms of the world will start using depressurized greenhouses.

[Ike_Witt]

Let us start launching orbital hydroponic farms. Then we can convert all that wasted farmland into more suburbs and strip malls.

[zelie_zelerton]

Why oh why do I keep misreading the title of this thread as ‘Planets Appear to do BETTER in Spaceships THan on Earth!’

[elelle]

I’m all for learning to grow food plants in other atmospheres, but took a couple of clicks from your link, Tuckerfan, to find the crux of the biscuit:

“We have found that the plants grow better in the low pressure, and also that the gas ethylene has a big effect on plant growth,” said Dr. Chuan He, Experiment Station researcher who plants, harvests and analyzes the lettuce for quality. Plants under low pressure produce less ethylene and use-up less carbohydrates at night (lower dark-period respiration), which produces larger heads of lettuce

To toss this in for informed opinions to weigh in.

[Tuckerfan]

Another thing that plants in low-pressure environments seem to do is emit less CO[sub]2[/sub].