Optimization of Novel Synthetic Substrates for Plant Growth in Space

The integration of plant growth into life support technologies is required to enable long-term human habitation beyond Low Earth Orbit. One of the roadblocks to that goal is being able to reliably produce nutritious food sources for crew. Current plant growth experiments utilize arcillite as substrate despite high mass, high variability, and potential for phytotoxicity. Development of novel synthetic substrates provide the opportunity to control substrate chemical structure and offer optimization of the substrate environment. Hydrogels have historically been used as amendments to improve soil quality for terrestrial agriculture, and evidence suggests that they can be used as the total substrate without negatively impacting plant growth and development. Hydrogels are often more than 99% water by volume and, compared to arcillite, would significantly reduce the payload mass and storage requirements when taking plant growth from experimental to food-supply scales. This project aims to develop granular hydrogel substrates. Polyacrylamide hydrogels of varying monomer and crosslinker concentrations will be created and their physical properties measured, along with polyacrylamide gels doped with modified monomers to increase ion sorption, organic content, and biodegradation. These properties will be used to select candidate gels to use in grow outs of radish (Raphanus sativus), and determine effects of substrate on productivity, nutrition, and development. As a result of this project, a high-fidelity prototype of the proposed technology will have been demonstrated to be operational under controlled environment conditions similar to those found in growth chambers currently available on the International Space Station.

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