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Scientists' dream of space-made food is becoming a reality

Somewhere at the bottom of the South Pacific, among the wreckage of Russia's Mir space station, lies the miniature Bulgarian-built greenhouse where the first space wheat crop was harvested.

The 1999 crop launched the era of growing food in space and scientists say the universe may hold the key to some of the earth's greatest problems.

They believe that what the North American Space Agency (NASA) calls astroculture can help raise yields and enhance disease resistance on earth, allow non-food use of crops in every aspect of human life and enable people's dream of colonizing other planets.

"We have left a landmark in history, proving for the first time that an organism is able to reproduce and develop normally through a life cycle in weightlessness," said associate professor Tania Ivanova, head of the greenhouse project.

The first 508 space wheat seeds were harvested aboard Mir in early 1999, said Ivanova, who also heads Bulgaria's Space Research Institute's Biotechnology Department.

The seeds were sown again and later that year yielded a second space crop, twice as big as the first.

The quest to grow crops in space is almost as old as space exploration itself.

Scientists tried growing seeds in lunar soil brought back to earth during the Apollo space programme and from 1975 every Russian space mission lifted off with a planting bed.

However, the lack of gravity affects plant's ability to put down roots, different light conditions and gases can disrupt growth and the absence of insects in space inhibits pollination, says Jay Skiles, global ecologist in Ecosystems Science and Technology Branch at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Despite some limited success with several non-edible plants, it wasn't until Russia hired Bulgaria in the 1980s to build the one square meter `Svet' (Light) greenhouse for experiments aboard Mir that food production really began.

In the early 1990s, cosmonauts succeeded in growing lettuce and radish under the 40cm high aluminum roof of the greenhouse. In 1995, the US and Russia began trying to grow wheat and the experiments paid off four years later.

NASA and the leaders of Russia's space program hoped that growing crops in space over an entire life cycle would help long-term piloted missions to Mars.

"You can't take all the food you're going to need in the rocket ... for 16 months of space flight. It's just not possible," Skiles said.

After 700 days of permanent experiments the odyssey of the Bulgarian-built greenhouse ended earlier this year when Mir plunged into the South Pacific at the close of a 15-year mission.

"Mir's death is not the end. It's only the beginning," Ivanova said.

And this time it's not all about feeding cosmonauts. It's also about solving terrestrial problems.

This May, NASA launched the Advanced Astroculture commercial project at the US$95 billion International Space Station (ISS) to allow industries to conduct long-term plant research in space.

The project will explore the benefits of using microgravity to create tailor-made crops which withstand inhospitable climates, resist pestilence, and need less space to grow.

NASA said the process of using bacteria to transfer desirable genes, such as those that enhance disease resistance to plants, work more efficiently in microgravity.

Brazil's farm ministry research arm Embrapa and satellite giant Brazsat last year hired Ivanova and her team to construct a plant-growing facility for the ISS.

"With the assembly of the ISS finally becoming a reality, a new era in agricultural plant research opportunities in microgravity is dawning," said Brazsat's president and CEO Joao Vaz in Washington.

Programs are under way to develop plants with constituents that when fed to animals would protect them from disease or parasites.
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