Plants naturally adapt to grow in challenging environments. Spontaneous natural mutations produce new traits, such as drought tolerance and disease resistance, which can help the plant to thrive. But the Earth\u2019s climate is changing faster than plants can naturally evolve, meaning that many of the plants we rely on for food are under threat.<\/p>\n
Agriculture\u00a0is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of changing climate<\/a> conditions\u00a0and although changes to temperature, rainfall patterns, and frost might\u00a0extend a growing season\u00a0or\u00a0enable the cultivation of different crops, climate change also introduces major challenges for farming.<\/p>\n Now, scientists are turning to the vastness of space for solutions.<\/p>\n Space seeds Seeds of a cereal grain called sorghum, and a type of cress called<\/a> Arabidopsis, spent several months on the ISS before they were returned to Earth this April for analysis. Now screening will begin to identify favorable traits in the mutated seeds.<\/p>\n Shoba Sivasankar, head of Plant Breeding and Genetics for the joint FAO and IAEA Center of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture<\/a>, explains that scientists are able to artificially induce plant mutations on Earth using gamma rays and X-rays.<\/p>\n However, the space environment, which offers a broader spectrum of radiation and additional extremes like microgravity and temperature fluctuations, has the potential to induce genetic alterations that differ from, or are induced much quicker than, those typically observed using terrestrial radiation sources.<\/p>\n \u201cIn space, the stress that will be encountered by an organism would be at the highest level and beyond anything that we can actually simulate on Earth,\u201d explains Sivasankar. She adds that the radiation outside the ISS could be \u201cmore than a hundredfold higher\u201d than the natural radiation possible on Earth.<\/p>\n However, the space environment, which offers a broader spectrum of radiation and additional extremes like microgravity and temperature fluctuations, has the potential to induce genetic alterations that differ from, or are induced much quicker than, those typically observed using terrestrial radiation sources.<\/p>\n \u201cIn space, the stress that will be encountered by an organism would be at the highest level and beyond anything that we can actually simulate on Earth,\u201d explains Sivasankar. She adds that the radiation outside the ISS could be \u201cmore than a hundredfold higher\u201d than the natural radiation possible on Earth.<\/p>\n By selectively breeding plants grown from the mutated seeds, Sivasankar and her team hope to create new crop strains.<\/p>\n \u201cFirstly, we are working on improving crop yields and productivity<\/a> of crops such as grains, legumes, roots and tubers \u2013 for example, cassava and sweet potato,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then there is climate<\/a> change resilience \u2013 for example resistance to increasing incidence of diseases, tolerance of climate phenomenon such as drought, or high heat, and increasing salinity of the soil because of saltwater intrusion or irrigation and evaporation.\u201d<\/p>\n A worldwide effort Many different varieties of seed have been\u00a0aboard the International Space Station, while researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) are currently experimenting with the cultivation of seeds that were sent on a journey around the moon as part of\u00a0NASA\u2019s Artemis\u00a0program.<\/p>\n The MSU scientists are exploring\u00a0the effect of extraterrestrial conditions on plant amino acids \u2013 the building block of proteins\u00a0\u2013 and evaluating how that impacts plant growth and development. The research could offer insights into the adaptive<\/a> capabilities of plants in extreme environments, and help us understand\u00a0how crops could potentially be grown off-Earth for long-duration space missions.<\/p>\n The private sector has also taken an interest in the impact of spaceflight on plant seeds. In the United Arab Emirates, StarLab Oasis, an Abu Dhabi-based startup, has announced plans to send quinoa seeds into space in the hopes of enhancing the genetic potential of a crop that holds promise for its nutritional value and adaptability<\/a> in arid regions.<\/p>\n Sending seeds to space will help \u201csustainability, climate change, and food security on Earth,\u201d StarLab Oasis\u2019 co-founder Allen Herbert\u00a0told CNN\u00a0in 2022. \u201cSpace is a place where you have limited resources, limited energy<\/a>, limited space. It\u2019s the perfect place to do research and that same technology can be brought right back down to Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s that same hope of finding solutions for Earthbound agriculture that\u2019s driving Sivasankar, and the IAEA says initial results from its research could be available later this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI do feel hopeful for the future of food<\/a> security, because technology is coming to the fore,\u201d she says. \u201cBut food security is not just about genetics \u2013 we need a combination<\/a> of all technologies, and everybody needs to come together and work together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plants naturally adapt to grow in challenging environments. Spontaneous natural mutations produce new traits, such as drought tolerance and disease resistance, which can help the plant to thrive. But the Earth\u2019s climate is changing faster than plants can naturally evolve, meaning that many of the plants we rely on for food are under threat. Agriculture\u00a0is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7553"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8437,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions\/8437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>In 2022, the joint laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)\u00a0sent seeds on a trip to the International Space Station\u00a0(ISS). The objective: to induce genetic mutations in the seeds through exposure to cosmic radiation and microgravity, that could help develop resilient crops capable of thriving in the face of the escalating climate crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>For decades scientists have been sending seeds to space. China<\/a> has been using space radiation to induce genetic mutation in crops since\u00a0the 1980s,\u00a0exposing seeds to cosmic radiation via satellites and high-altitude balloons, which reportedly facilitated the production of giant sweet peppers\u00a0and improvements\u00a0in\u00a0wheat and rice.<\/p>\n