This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: As NASA and its partners prepare for longer human missions beyond Earth, University of Florida researchers are investigating a challenge that could affect astronauts' ability to grow fresh food in space: plant disease. The university's MVP-Plant-02 investigation, launched to the International Space Station on Oct. 13, will examine how plants respond to a fungal plant pathogen in microgravity.
The research will help scientists determine whether the space environment changes a plant's defenses against disease and could make infections more severe. Led by UF/IFAS researchers Andrew C. Schuerger, Ph.D., Robert Ferl, Ph.D., and Anna-Lisa Paul, Ph.D., the investigation brings together expertise in plant pathology and plant physiology from across UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
The science team members are combining decades of experience studying how phytopathogens develop on vegetable crops and how plants grow and respond to the space environment. "As humanity begins to establish bases on the moon and Mars, crews will benefit from the production of fresh fruits and vegetables in habitats called bioregenerative life support systems," Schuerger said. "Wherever plants and humans go, plant pathogens are soon to follow." Bioregenerative life support systems use plants and other biological processes to help provide food and regenerate essential resources, including oxygen and water.
Such systems could reduce astronauts' dependence on supplies transported from Earth, but they will need to remain productive and healthy over extended missions. Understanding how plant diseases develop in space is an important step toward making those systems reliable. MVP-Plant-02 will examine the interaction between Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant related to mustard, and Golovinomyces cichoracearum, a fungus that causes powdery mildew.
The team will investigate whether the fungus develops more aggressively in microgravity and how the plant's gene activities change as the disease progresses. By studying both disease development and gene expression, researchers hope to better understand the biological processes underlying plant responses to infection in space. The investigation will use the Multi-Use Variable-g Platform, or MVP, a system developed by Redwire Space Technologies Inc. that enables experiments aboard the space station to be conducted under different gravity conditions.
Researchers will compare plants grown in microgravity with plants maintained at Earth-like gravity aboard the station, as well as a separate ground control at Kennedy Space Center. This approach will allow the team to distinguish the effects of microgravity from other factors associated with growing plants in space. The experiment also introduces an important advance in space-based plant pathology: researchers will inoculate plants with the fungal phytopathogen after the plants are already in space.
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