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Producing food onboard an interplanetary spacecraft can reduce the consumables required for the trip, but a greenhouse or even a hydroponic farm would mass too much. Tissue culture has the promise of growing only the edible part of food: orange pulp without the orange tree; beans without the stalks, stems, leaves, roots, buds, or pods of the bean plant. This would also eliminate the soil, lights and infrastructure of a greenhouse. Plant hormones would be required, grown either with genetically engineered bacteria or the tissue could be modified to produce its own. The culture would feed on sugar, so it would require a sugar source. Although this would be more expensive than a greenhouse, the mass reduction makes it applicable to a spacecraft. Most current research into plant tissue culture is focused on micro-propagation, also known as somatic embryogenesis. That is growing whole plants from a sample of an adult plant. This is plant cloning. Growing just fruit or fruit tissue without the tree is more challenging. Morris Benjaminson is working on tissue growth of a fish fillet: Fish flesh grown without the fish. This could produce meat, or at least fish, without the vast greenhouse necessary to provide fodder to feed livestock. To join this project and help answer these questions, click the Yahoo Groups button on the left.
Some additional resources regarding plant tissue culture: |
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