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Potential of a Plant Gas Exchange Mechanistic Model to Predict Plant Transpiration in Veggie on ISSPlants are an essential part of long-duration space travel, as they enable food production and contribute to air revitalization through photosynthesis, and water recycling through transpiration. Understanding their growth mechanisms is essential to use them to sustain human life in space. In particular, gas exchange – e.g., CO2 absorption and water transpiration – are modified in microgravity because of the lack of buoyancy-driven convection, and in the long run, this could result in impaired plant growth. Water absorbed by the plants mainly depends on their size and on environmental conditions (air temperature, humidity and ventilation), but in microgravity watering plants is a delicate operation – too much water results in flooded roots and too little water leads in a few hours to wilted plants. This is regularly experienced in the Veggie system on ISS, which enables small-scale food production in microgravity since 2014. This presentation explores how a mechanistic model of plant gas exchange can help predict plant transpiration in Veggie and thus better predict daily watering. For each plant, inputs on canopy leaf area (acquired with daily photos), air temperature and relative humidity in the plant compartment, as well as airspeed at the top of its canopy enable accurate predictions of transpiration in microgravity. This brings a better understanding of water movement through the plant in microgravity in relation to ventilation and plant size and would result in easier management of plant watering in Veggie. Ultimately, this work could be applied to any space crop production in microgravity and be used for water management and yield predictions. This work was funded by NASA Space Biology through NASA postdoctoral program / USRA.
Document ID
20205010543
Acquisition Source
Kennedy Space Center
Document Type
Poster
Authors
Lucie Poulet
(NPP Fellow Merritt Island, Florida, United States)
Gioia Donna Massa
(Kennedy Space Center Merritt Island, Florida, United States)
Raymond M Wheeler
(Kennedy Space Center Merritt Island, Florida, United States)
Date Acquired
November 21, 2020
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Meeting Information
Meeting: COSPAR 2021 Assembly
Location: Virtual
Country: AU
Start Date: January 28, 2021
End Date: February 4, 2021
Sponsors: Universities Space Research Association
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNH15C048B
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Use by or on behalf of the US Gov. Permitted.
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