Post-harvest cleaning, sanitization, and microbial monitoring of soilless nutrient delivery systems for sustainable space crop production.

ABSTRACT: Bioregenerative food systems that routinely produce fresh, safe-to-eat crops onboard spacecraft can supplement the nutrition and variety of shelf-stable spaceflight food systems for use during future exploration missions (i.e., low earth orbit, Mars transit, lunar, and Martian habitats). However, current space crop production systems are not yet sustainable because they primarily utilize consumable granular media and, to date, operate like single crop cycle, space biology experiments where root modules are sanitized prior to launch and discarded after each grow-out. Moreover, real-time detection of the cleanliness of crops produced in spacecraft is not possible. A significant paradigm shift is needed in the design of future space crop production systems, as they transition from operating a

SUBMITTER: Curry AB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11502331 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature