INE Proposal in Response to NASA EPSCoR Rapid Response Research Appendix D: NASA SMD Biological and Physical Sciences - Crop Plant Stress Tolerance for Space Exploration - Water Delivery and Gas Exchange Crop Stress Analysis for Space Exploration

Growing plants in reduced gravity is essential for future long-term missions. Although plant growth modules for microgravity have been developed and tested for more than 40 years (Wheeler, 2017), creating optimal water-saturation conditions for plant growth in reduced gravity remains a significant obstacle (e.g., Hoehn et al., 2000; Zabel et al., 2016; Anderson et al., 2017). With the shift to capillary-dominated fluid behavior, managing water, gas exchange, and the delivery of nutrients is challenging (Jones and Or, 1999; Steinberg et al., 2005). The discrepancy is mainly attributed to unexpected fluid distributions where the hysteresis in the soil-water retention properties appear to play an enhanced role compared to Earth which increases the risk of hypoxia and disruptions in water and nutrient supply to plant roots (Heinse et al., 2009, 2015b). The goal of this work is to enable productive space agriculture during spaceflight and lunar and planetary habitats by reducing these root-zone crop stresses.

This proposal is responsive to determining how interrelated stress factors caused by challenges in providing balanced water, air, and nutrient delivery in reduced gravity impact plant production. We will (1) analyze existing root-zone data collected during the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) PH-01 mission (soil and crop water balance, soil water and oxygen) comparing water and nutrient delivery between ground-based and microgravity experiments, and (2) use numerical forward and inverse modeling in Hydrus 3D to frame an optimization problem leading to candidate management strategies that minimize crop stress by providing balanced root resource fluxes and promote uniform root distributions. For the optimization, we will consider effective diffusivities, allowing a more accurate description of root-experienced fluxes combined with root- and microbial requirements (similar to Heinse et al., 2009; Jones et al., 2012) considering amongst others the proposed plant pillow architecture for the VEGGIE missions (Massa et al., 2013, 2020; Morrow et al., 2016). The investigations into root-zone stress tolerances are essential for providing the root-zone management and design characteristics that are critical for reliable and up-scalable plant space agriculture.

The research described in this proposal will yield new knowledge and understanding about watering crops in reduced gravity. The combination of analyzing root zone data between 1g and microgravity together with numerical modeling of root zone performance allows us to better understand crop stress caused by water and nutrient delivery deficits and root zone hypoxia. Improving this understanding is crucial for predicting the efficacy of water and nutrient delivery systems in spaceflight, and lunar and planetary habitats. Thus, our work will contribute to how plant stress may be reduced during each growth stage by evaluating management set points and delivery strategies. The proposed application of media characterization, data analysis and modeling leading to the formulation of an optimization problem is innovative, and our focus on root-zone stressors caused by inadequate water delivery has been identified as a key limitation to plant-growth successes in space.

This project represents a training opportunity for an undergraduate student. The undergraduate student will be involved in the data analysis and laboratory experiments and is expected to complete a small independent project that will be presented at a subsequent conference. The student will also be encouraged to participate in scholarly publications as a co-author or potentially as a lead author. This project is of particular interest to the PI because it helps foster collaboration with NASA scientists, and harbors a vision of long-term contributions to successful bioregenerative life support systems in space.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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