The challenge of plant in Space

All the resources needed for short-term missions in Space are brought from Earth. However this will be not possible for longer missions, for economical and practical reasons. A feasible alternative would be the development of a suitable system, aiming to a continual recycling of the available resources. In this scenario, higher plants represent an optimal tool to regenerate air through the photosynthetic CO2 absorption and O2 emission, to recover purified water through the transpiration, and to recycle waste products through the mineral nutrition, while providing fresh food to integrate the crew diet. This concept is called “Bioregenerative Life Support System” (BLSS) or “Controlled Ecological Life Support System” (CELSS). In order to perform the desired functions in BLSS and produce edible biomass while recycling waste products, using light as source of energy to promote photosynthesis, plants need to be grown in precise environmental and cultural conditions. In Space plant growth is limited mainly by two space factors: microgravity and ionizing radiation. This talk explores some case study related to plants subjected to different quality of ionizing radiation.