Zero distance to space "plant" food
"The height of the box is 14 centimeters, which is more than (14 centimeters), and the tall rice is now about 30 centimeters high!" On August 29, the rice planted by Zheng Huiqiong's team on the Chinese space station was successfully "full moon". At the press conference, she held up a box of The demonstration of planting green rice seedlings explained to the media reporters that the excitement was even incoherent.
Zheng Huiqiong is a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the head of the experimental project "Molecular Mechanisms of Flowering Regulation of Higher Plants under Microgravity" in the Sky Pod of China Space Station.
For nearly 20 years, her team has been working on the growth of higher plants in space.
The progress made in the rice experiment in the space station means that the Chinese are expected to realize the full life cycle cultivation of rice on the space station for the first time in the world, laying the foundation for humans to eat freshly cooked rice in space in the future.
No matter where human beings live, they must solve the problem of eating.
On Earth, the food crisis, which is no longer a new term, is becoming more and more severe under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, geopolitics, and extreme weather. In space, it is obviously not a long-term solution to transport food supplies by rockets.
In order to solve the problem of eating, people are not only asking the land, the ocean, but also the space for answers.
So how exactly does space respond to us?
Rice grown on China's space station 'grows well'
Since the launch of the first artificial earth satellite in the 1950s, how to use plants to ensure the food, oxygen and pure water that humans need to survive in the extraterrestrial environment has become one of the most concerned issues in space life science.
To survive in space, planting crops is a problem that must be solved.
A scientist on NASA's International Space Station and Spacecraft Handling Board has said that it would cost about $10,000 to get a pound of food to the ISS.
A senior research scientist in the space food system from NASA's Johnson Space Center also said in public that if astronauts start a five-year journey to Mars, each person needs to consume about 3,000 kilograms of food.
It is obviously unsustainable for these foods to be transported by rockets.
In other words, if the astronauts, like Shen Teng's Duguyue, "break the jar and fall", and rely on the stockpile to maintain their lives for a long time, "Lone on the Moon" may end as soon as it starts.
After the establishment of farming civilization on earth, human beings have already started to "restart from scratch" in space.
Especially in the past 10 years, as returning to the moon, landing on Mars, and establishing a lunar or Mars base have become important goals of human space exploration, scientists from all over the world are preparing food for long-term survival in space.
Zheng Huiqiong felt: "It is urgent to solve the scientific problem of establishing a life support system in space."
It is against this background that a series of space planting experiments such as rice planting in the space station came into being.
On July 24, 2022, the Wentian experimental module of my country's space station was successfully launched and rendezvous with the Tianhe core module. The Wentian experimental module was equipped with scientific experimental cabinets such as life ecology experimental cabinets and biotechnology experimental cabinets.
On July 28, the experimental unit containing the experimental samples of rice seeds was installed by the astronauts into the general experimental module of life ecology in the Wentian experimental cabin, and the experiment was officially launched on July 29.
Zheng Huiqiong said that the goal of this experiment is to complete the research on the whole life cycle of rice in the space station from seed to seed for the first time in the world, to explore the use of space environmental factors to control the flowering of plants, and to find the efficiency of plant production in a small enclosed space. possible way to maximize.
After the experiment was started, tall and dwarf rice seeds struggled to grow, but as expected, they encountered "acclimatization" in the microgravity space environment and suffered from "spaceflight syndrome".
The grown rice seedlings looked a little "lazy", and instead of standing up energetically like the rice on the ground, they "lyed" on the wall of the transparent experimental box.
However, this does not affect the hope that the experiment brings people to success.
Zheng Huiqiong said that the seed germination of rice has been successfully started. The tall rice seedlings have grown to about 30 centimeters high, and the dwarf rice is also 5-6 centimeters high, and they are in good growth condition.
After the seeds are successfully produced in the future, the astronauts will collect samples, cryopreserve them, and finally return to the ground with the astronauts for analysis.
Humans have successfully harvested canola, wheat, peas and more in space
In fact, space has not only grown well-growing rice, but also brought many surprises to human beings.
Zheng Huiqiong introduced that in the past 60 years, scientists have carried out a lot of research on planting and cultivating plants in space, and have carried out more than 20 kinds of plants and more than 50 space cultivation experiments in various space vehicles.
According to public information, in 1979, the Salyut No. 6 space station had begun to cultivate bulbs of onions and orchids, and carried out research on the growth and development of Arabidopsis, peas, and wheat.
In 1982, Arabidopsis thaliana was grown in the greenhouse of the Salyut 7 space station, and the first seed-to-seed space planting was achieved.
Arabidopsis thaliana is a representative of dicotyledonous, long-day, and cruciferous plants. Many vegetables, such as greens and rape, belong to the cruciferous family, so this development is of great significance to vegetable growing in space.
In 1997, "ultradwarf wheat" completed its first seed-to-seed experiment aboard the Mir space station.
The battle to defend the "staple food" of human space survival has come a long way.
With the advancement of science and technology, the "brain holes" of scientists are also getting bigger and bigger.
In 2006, Zheng Huiqiong's team observed the flowering process of green cabbage on my country's "Practice No. 8" satellite.
In 2012, American astronaut Don Pettit started a blog called "Space Zucchini Diary" about the process of growing a zucchini on the International Space Station.
Subsequently, the International Space Station launched a vegetable planting experiment in 2014, and the lettuce harvested in 2015 was also tested by the astronauts.
In 2016, a splendid zinnia bloomed on the International Space Station. As the first ornamental flower cultivated by humans outside the earth, it not only deserved to be the "oiran" in space, but also made great contributions to the research on the space flowering of plants. small contribution.
In 2021, Chile peppers will bloom and bear fruit in the "Higher Plant Habitat" incubator on the International Space Station and become a "side dish" for astronauts.
Zheng Huiqiong said that the main goal of early space plant cultivation experiments was how to feed plants in a space environment so that they could germinate, grow, bloom and produce seeds, and now these goals have been achieved one by one.
Some basic spatial plant biology issues, such as plant tropism, root formation, germination, seed composition, gene and protein expression changes, etc., have also been deeply studied in this process.
At present, the research focus of scientists has gradually expanded from the research on the seedling stage of plants to the research on seed production.
However, only a few crops such as canola, wheat and peas have completed seed-to-seed experiments in space.
At the same time, the problems of delayed flowering time, low flowering number, low seed setting rate and decreased seed quality of plants remain unsurmountable under spatial conditions.
Therefore, the related experiments such as rice in the Wentian cabin are mainly devoted to the study of the molecular mechanism of flowering regulation.
"Taste of space" flew into the homes of ordinary people
Space planting is only a corner of space agriculture, and scientists also look forward to using space resources to solve the problem of eating on Earth.
It is also an important idea to use space environment breeding to improve varieties of crops on the earth.
Why do you favor aerospace breeding?
With the improvement of people's living standards, food has long been unable to meet the needs of ordinary people. The standards of deliciousness and health have made people's demand for new agricultural varieties more and more urgent. In addition, the social and natural environment are changing, such as international competition, high temperature and drought, etc. Factors are constantly putting forward new requirements for crop varieties.
Guo Tao, deputy director of the National Plant Space Breeding Engineering Technology Research Center and professor of South China Agricultural University, believes that space breeding combined with modern biology is one of the important means to ensure the safety of the national seed industry.
Guo Tao said that scientists send earth seeds into space through aircraft, and use conditions such as high space vacuum, microgravity, and space rays to induce changes in their genetic genes, return to the ground, and then find ways to "fix" those good changes. Improve specific traits of crop varieties.
In this way, my country's ninth returnable satellite in 1987 carried more than 100 varieties of crop seeds such as carefully selected wheat, rice, green pepper, etc., and successfully completed my country's first space breeding "space journey".
Subsequently, experiments related to space breeding became more and more abundant, including vegetables, fruits, flowers, and Chinese herbal medicines.
After more than 30 years of practice, the achievements of space breeding have emerged one after another. my country has screened more than 1,200 new materials through space breeding, and cultivated more than 260 new varieties, with an annual promotion area of tens of millions of acres.
Many scientific research results have been moved from the laboratory to the dining table of ordinary people.
Guo Tao introduced that in the 1990s, my country had realized the industrialization of rice, wheat and other crops space breeding varieties, and then related industries continued to grow and develop.
Taking Guo Tao's research team as an example, over the past 10 years, the team has selected and bred 57 new rice varieties that have been promoted and applied in production, with a cumulative area of more than 50 million mu.
Guo Tao said: "For example, after the space mutation of Huahang No. 31 rice, the yield has increased by about 10%, and it has become the dominant agricultural variety in Guangdong Province." Earlier, some experts told the media that about 30% of the strawberries in the Beijing market are "spacecraft". strawberry".
In fact, the idea of human beings using space resources to enrich the earth's table is not limited to space breeding.
Some experts have suggested that in the future, a space biosynthesis factory may be built in space, using unique conditions such as microgravity and high vacuum to complete the efficient synthesis of macromolecular compounds or specific proteins, and to produce high-purity starch, specific proteins or "artificial proteins" on a large scale. high-value agricultural products such as meat.
It is not difficult to see that no matter where we live, the plan and execution of human beings relying on "sky" to eat are quite good.
Humans want to be a multi-planet species, probably not an extravagant hope.
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Qian Source: China Youth Daily