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Agribusiness covers traditional agricultural areas such as plant growth
while adding the modern components, such as the production of food and
drugs through plants. Commercial space research has resulted in a number
of significant successes, including:
Astroponics
When it comes to growing plants in space, the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics is the place to go. Now, that experience can come to a classroom near you in the form of a plant growth chamber developed by this NASA Commercial Space Center as an educational product. Fisher
Science Education division of the Fisher Scientific Company is marketing the ASTROPONICS™ product and related products in its 1999/2000 catalog. ASTROPONICS™ provides students with hands-on experience in growing plants in an enclosed chamber that provides artificial lighting, water and nutrients to the plant without opening the chamber. With this, the basic principles of conducting plant experiments in space can be simulated in the classroom.
A Rose By Any Other Name
Many were enchanted
during the historic STS–95
mission by pictures of a
miniature rose plant growing
in the ASTROCULTURE™
commercial plant growth
chamber. The rose was flown
to see if the microgravity
environment would alter the
fragrance of the rose, or
perhaps produce an entirely
new scent — something very
important to the multi-billion
dollar a year flavors and fragrance industry.
According to
International Flavors & Fragrances, the commercial
partner, the results were literally out of this world. “The
fact that fragrance molecules do change in proportion to
one another promises to lend a greater dimension to
future fragrance research and the possibility of using
microgravity to create new fragrance entities, or, for
that matter, any chemical products including possibly
pharmaceuticals, that the plant produces,” states
Eugene Grisanti, Chairman and CEO of International
Flavors & Fragrances. Dr. Braja Mookherjee, Vice
President and Director of Natural Products Research
states “This transformation has created a completely
new fragrance that is not of this Earth. IFF intends to
further explore space research on living plant materials
to benefit mankind.”
Seed production is an essential part of crop
production: without a good supply of seeds, farmers can
not plant their fields. In 1996, the Wisconsin Center for
Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR), a Commercial
Space Center, and Pioneer Hi-Bred International launched
a research
effort to
accelerate
plant growth so
that new seeds
could be
produced in the
shortest
possible amount
of time. This
research was
done using the
Commercial Plant
Biotechnology
Facility, designed
for space-based
research and
featuring a
totally enclosed and precisely controlled environment,
and was able to reduce plant growth cycles. An
example of this was reducing the
soybean growth cycle from an
average of 110 days to an
average of 62 days a significant
improvement. This was made
possible through the advanced
software and related technologies,
and the use of ASTROCULTURE™
technologies that have been
proven on the Shuttle.
An out-of-this-world technology has landed at local
grocers and elsewhere to help keep fruits and
vegetables fresh and ready to eat. The system,
developed for use in the ASTROCULTURE™ commercial
plant growth facility, removes ethylene from the air.
Ethylene is
a natural
hormone
that is an
essential
part of
the
ripening
process.
Too much
of it,
however,
causes
plants and plant products to prematurely wither and
spoil. KES Science and Technology of Georgia has
licensed the patent to the system, which uses glass
pellets coated with titanium dioxide and ultraviolet light
to remove ethylene, and is marketing it under the
brand name Bio-Kleen to grocers and others involved
with the storage and transports of plants and
materials. Unlike other systems, this technology
requires virtually no maintenance and has also been
shown to reduce bacteria, molds, and odors from
storage rooms. It is estimated that the system could
increase the shelf-life of perishable items by a week,
providing a significant savings by reducing the amount
of food or other materials that spoil and have to be
thrown away.
The production minitubers, dime-sized potatoes used
as seeds for larger crops, is a business that is
anything but small potatoes. Unlike other seed crops,
seed potatoes are bulky and heavy, and most
countries limit their import as a means of controlling
plant disease. In addition, the normal process of
producing new, disease free seed potatoes can literally
take years to bear fruit. Yet many countries need
improved seed potatoes now, since as much as 85
percent of current crops are diseased to the point that
they are not fit for human consumption. American Ag-Tec
International, Ltd. is making use of the environmental
and growth systems developed for use in the
ASTROCULTURE™ and the Commercial Plant Biotechnology
Facility to address this critical problem.
The Quantum™
Tuber Facility is expected to make significant
contributions to addressing this need. According to
American Ag-Tec International President Robert Britt,
one Quantum™ Tuber Facility with approximately 1,000
growth chambers, could replace one quarter of the
seed potatoes imported by Egypt, allowing the $30
million spent on them to be used for other purposes. In
addition, the system is also considered to be “ideal”
for growing plants that contain “edible vaccines.” Such
genetically altered potatoes are already being grown,
and the use of plants for such work reduces the
chance of contamination, is less expensive than building
new facilities for traditional means of production, and
eliminates the need to give shots to administer the
vaccine. By growing such plants in a country, the costs
of shipping and problems with refrigerating the cargo
to prevent spoilage are eliminated. As a result, the
Quantum™ Tuber Facility may prove to be an important
tool for crop improvement, fighting hunger, and
fighting disease.
Any gambler will tell you that odds of 1 in a 1,000,
or worse, are not a good bet. Yet, those are the odds
facing researchers trying to transfer desirable genes
into food and other important crops. A commercial
agribusiness experiment on STS–95, however,
indicates that microgravity may dramatically change
the odds in favor of the researchers and make the
operation far less a gamble.
Instead of older methods—such as cross pollination
and grafting—that can take years to produce results,
researchers now use bacteria to transfer the gene
carrying the desired trait to seedlings. These seedlings
will, in turn, pass the trait along to future generations of
the plant. In Earth-based laboratories, however, the
expected success rate for this process is at best 1 plant
in 1,000, or 0.1 percent. In the experiment—performed
by industry partners Rapigen LLC, The Indiana Crop
Improvement Association, Inc., Christophersen &
Associates, Inc., and the University of Toledo—
approximately 1,000 soybean seedlings had their
growing point (meristem) region damaged just before
launch, and were
wrapped in water-soaked
paper rolls
that were then placed
in a modified
ASTROCULTURE™
locker. Damaging the
growing point
provided a point of
entry for bacteria
containing the gene
to be transferred, in this case a marker gene that is
fluorescent and easily tracked. The bacteria was mixed
into growth media and transferred into the containers
with the paper rolls once on orbit. “The level of genetic
transfer was way beyond our expectations,” says Ray Bula, a
Principal with Rapigen LLC and a retired director of WCSAR.
“We thought that if we could double the rate of transfer seen on
Earth, it would have been promising.” Instead of simply doubling,
according to Bula, there was more than a 10-fold increase in
genetic transfer compared with the ground-based control
experiment. While this was extremely successful, an
unanticipated result was a high rate of infection.
For a number of reasons, the growth of bacteria is much
more difficult to control in microgravity than it is on Earth. As a
result, the high rate of infection blocked the vascular system of
the plants. Bula states that this problem can be corrected, in
part, by reducing the amount of bacteria since less is needed to
do the job in microgravity.
Work is already underway on a second gene transfer
experiment. This experiment will include refinements from the
data gathered on STS–95, and instead of a marker gene will
transfer a gene to the soybeans that has a medical application.
Such experimentation is extremely important to farmers, as
genetically engineered varieties will make up more than 70
percent of the soybeans planted nationally this year. Improved
gene transfer opens the door to a host of other exciting
possibilities including plants that are insect resistant—reducing
the need for chemical insecticides—and plants that incorporate
medical vaccines.
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