Open Access(299) Comparison of Growth of Salad Crops under ISS Baseline Environmental Conditions in Mixed Crop versus Monoculture Hydroponic Systems
Author(s) -
Sharon L. Edney,
Jeffrey T. Richards,
Matthew Sisko,
N.C. Yorio,
Gary W. Stutte,
Raymond M. Wheeler
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
hortscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.518
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 2327-9834
pISSN - 0018-5345
DOI - 10.21273/hortsci.40.4.1010a
Subject(s) - allium fistulosum , monoculture , raphanus , crop , lactuca , life support system , sunflower , horticulture , agronomy , helianthus annuus , hydroponics , biology , environmental science , allium , engineering , aerospace engineering
Development of a crop production system that can be used on the International Space Station, long duration transit missions, and a lunar/Mars habitat, is a part of NASA's Advanced Life Support (ALS) research efforts. Selected crops require the capability to be grown under environmental conditions that might be encountered in the open cabin of a space vehicle. It is also likely that the crops will be grown in a mixed-cropping system to increase the production efficiency and variety for the crew's dietary supplementation. Three candidate ALS salad crops, radish ( Raphanus sativus L. cv. Cherry Bomb II), lettuce ( Lactuca sativa L. cv. Flandria) and bunching onion ( Allium fistulosum L. cv. Kinka) were grown hydroponically as either monoculture (control) or mixed-crop within a walk-in growth chamber with baseline environments maintained at 50% relative humidity, 300 μmol·m -2 ·s -1 PPF and a 16-hour light/8-hour dark photoperiod under cool-white fluorescent lamps. Environmental treatments in separate tests were performed with either 400, 1200, or 4000 μmol·mol -1 CO 2 combined with temperature treatments of 25 °C or 28 °C. Weekly time-course harvests were taken over 28 days of growth. Results showed that none of the species experienced negative effects when grown together under mixed-crop conditions compared to monoculture growth conditions.