New Crop Testing Nutritional and Organoleptic Analysis

Final Poster for New Crop Testing Nutritional and Organoleptic Analysi

Sustained Veggie: Considerations for Consistent On-Orbit Leafy Green Production

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Vegetable Production Systems Component Tests

As long-term spaceflight missions become ever more imminent, astronaut nutrition and diet require further investigation and development. Dehydrated or stabilized food sources are currently used for spaceflight, but growing fresh produce aboard spacecraft can potentially supplement the astronauts diets. Further, having astronauts work with plants while in space can provide psychological benefits by serving as a tangible passage of time and representing a living component aboard an otherwise mechanical environment. As spaceflight duration will lengthen as missions head back to the Moon and to Mars, having the ability and knowledge to grow fresh produce will become even more vital. The following experiments were conducted in the late summer and fall of 2018. The purpose of these studies were to examine potential off-gas from a system component that could potentially inhibit plant germination, optimizing lighting methods and protocol for mizuna production, determining a fertilizer method that best promotes healthy mizuna yields, and troubleshooting tomato production for the next generation of the Vegetable Production System

Summary of Research and Outreach Activities during the 2021 Season of the EDEN ISS Antarctic Greenhouse

THE EDEN ISS greenhouse is a space-analogue test facility near the German Neumayer Station III (NM-III) in Antarctica. The greenhouse design, construction, and test phase began in 2015, and the facility was shipped to NM-III in January 2018. From 2018 until early 2022, the greenhouse was in continuous operation during every winter-over period, with the 2021 season being the latest to be completed. The purpose of the facility is to enable multidisciplinary research on topics related to plant cultivation on future human space exploration missions. Research on food quality and safety, plant health monitoring, microbiology, system validation, human factors, horticultural sciences, and resource demand was conducted. During the 2021 season, research and operation of the EDEN ISS greenhouse was done as part of a DLR-NASA collaboration with an American on-site operator. Part of this collaboration was testing new crops like chili pepper, broccoli, cauliflower, and beans, which had never been grown inside EDEN ISS. These crops were complemented by a variety of lettuces, mustard greens, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and kohlrabi. In total, approximately 315 kg of fresh produce was harvested during the 2021 season, which was supplied to the NM-III wintering crew. Frozen and dried plant subsamples were collected and transferred back to Europe and the United States for further investigation. Additional samples were taken from the nutrient delivery subsystem and from surfaces inside the EDEN ISS facility in order to continue the microbiological research activities from previous years. Another research focus was capturing crew time for all activities inside the MTF and select support activities inside NM-III to increase the understanding of work time demand for future food production systems in space. DLR and NASA also continued the numerous outreach activities of the past years. This paper summarizes both the research and the outreach activities during the latest operational season of the EDEN ISS Antarctic greenhouse in 2021

Weeds in Cover Crops: Context and Management Considerations

Cover crops are increasingly being adopted to provide multiple ecosystem services such as improving soil health, managing nutrients, and decreasing soil erosion. It is not uncommon for weeds to emerge in and become a part of a cover crop plant community. Since the role of cover cropping is to supplement ecosystem service provisioning, we were interested in assessing the impacts of weeds on such provisioning. To our knowledge, no research has examined how weeds in cover crops may impact the provision of ecosystem services and disservices. Here, we review services and disservices associated with weeds in annual agroecosystems and present two case studies from the United States to illustrate how weeds growing in fall-planted cover crops can provide ground cover, decrease potential soil losses, and effectively manage nitrogen. We argue that in certain circumstances, weeds in cover crops can enhance ecosystem service provisioning. In other circumstances, such as in the case of herbicide-resistant weeds, cover crops should be managed to limit weed biomass and fecundity. Based on our case studies and review of the current literature, we conclude that the extent to which weeds should be allowed to grow in a cover crop is largely context-dependent.This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Organic Research and Extension Initiative under Project PENW-2015-07433 (Grant No. 2015-51300-24156, Accession No. 1007156) and the National Science Foundation (Grant No. DGE1255832)

VEG-04: The Effects of Light Quality on Mizuna Mustard Growth, Nutritional Composition, and Organoleptic Acceptability for a Space Diet

Growing fresh, nutritious, palatable produce for crew consumption during spaceflight may provide health-promoting, bioavailable nutrients and enhance the astronaut dietary experience as we move toward longer-duration missions. Tending plants may also serve as a countermeasure for crew psychological stresses associated with spaceflight. However, requirements to support consistent growth of a variety of high quality, nutritious crops under spaceflight environmental conditions remain unclear. This study explores the potential to grow crops for consumption on the International Space Station (ISS) using the Veggie vegetable-production system. VEG-04A and B were two flight tests conducted in 2019 with the leafy green crop mizuna mustard. Mizuna was grown in two Veggie chambers simultaneously, with the chambers set to different red-to-blue light formulations; one Veggie was programmed as "red-rich" and the second as "blue-rich." Light quality is known to impact plant growth, nutrition, microbiology, and organoleptic characteristics on Earth, and the Veggie flight tests examined how these impacts might differ in microgravity. VEG-04A, a 35-day growth test with a single harvest, was initiated in June and harvested in July 2019. At harvest, the astronauts froze half of the edible plant tissue to return to Earth and weighed the remaining half using the Mass Measurement Device (MMD). Weighed samples were then cleaned with produce-sanitizing wipes, and consenting crew members participated in organoleptic evaluation of the fresh produce. The remaining sanitized produce was available for crew consumption as desired. Frozen flight samples were returned at the end of August for microbial and chemical analyses to assess food safety and nutritional quality. No pathogens were detected on VEG-04A flight or ground control samples. On average, bacterial and fungal counts were significantly lower on ground control samples than flight samples. VEG-04B, a 56-day test with multiple harvests from the same plants, assessed sustained productivity. VEG-04B was initiated in October 2019 with three harvests at four, six, and eight weeks after initiation. Challenges with the watering program occurred early during VEG-04A, and several plants failed to survive in both the flight and ground control operations. Thus, prior to VEG-04B, an extra test was conducted to tailor water timing and volumes. This test determined that mizuna grew best if the wicks inside the plant pillow were allowed to dry after plants germinated, reducing persistent water around the stem. The wicks changed from being a conduit for water out of the plant pillow to being a conduit for air into the root zone. This test allowed a fine tuning of methods for VEG-04B. It is our hope that these tests on ISS will help mitigate the risk of an inadequate food supply for long-duration missions by adding fresh vegetables to the crew diet. This research was co-funded by the Human Research Program and Space Biology (MTL#1075) in the ILSRA 2015 NRA call

From space to Antarctica: How we learn to grow foodbetter by testing in extreme environments

General presentation about EDEN ISS: From space to Antarctica: How we learn to grow foodbetter by testing in extreme environment

CEA in Space (and Time)

General overview presentation about EDEN

Workload Measurements in the EDEN ISS Greenhouse during the 2021 Antarctic Overwintering Mission

From January 2018 to February 2022, the EDEN ISS project investigated technologies for plant cultivation and operation procedures for planetary surface greenhouses. The EDEN ISS space analog test facility was located near the German Neumayer Station III in Antarctica. For the fourth and final overwintering expedition from 2021 to early 2022, a tenth person joined the Neumayer Station III overwintering team as the dedicated on-site operator of the EDEN ISS greenhouse, supported by an interagency collaboration between DLR and NASA. For this final mission of the EDEN ISS Antarctic campaign, 790 g/m2/day fresh produce was grown within the 12.5 m2 plant cultivation area of the EDEN ISS greenhouse – comparable to production in prior missions. As in previous years, operator workload was assessed using the NASA Task Load Index to investigate which tasks/procedures could be facilitated in terms of workload, how workload changed over the course of the mission, and how workload could be reduced in the future. In this paper, we present the results of the NASA Task Load Index measurements conducted from 4 October 2021 to 26 December 2021. Detailed workload measurements are presented with respect to specific recurring tasks, e.g., daily/weekly/monthly routines, harvesting, and pruning, as well as workload on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The measurements show that there is a need to reduce the workload of the on-site operator in a space analog greenhouse. These studies provide valuable insight for operating future greenhouses on the Moon and Mars, which should already be included in the planning phases of such space missions