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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Nasa

Scientists in Antarctica Grow Food Without Soil or Sunlight — Get Ready, Mars

Astronauts, you had better like salad.

AP News reported last week that a team of scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station III in Antarctica had successfully grown their first crop of produce without any soil, sunlight, or pesticides. The goal of the project was to explore food growing methods for use on outer space missions.

In total the researchers harvested eight pounds of salad greens, including swiss chard, 18 cucumbers, and 70 radishes — enough for quite the veg-heavy feast. And this crop just the beginning. The German Aerospace Center said last Thursday that its scientists hope to harvest up to 11 pounds of produce per week by May.

The vegetables were grown inside a shipping container, which arrived in the Antarctic in January of 2018. The plants are grown through aeroponics, a method of cultivation that doesn’t require soil or sunlight. Instead, plants receive nutrients via a liquid (made of nutrient solution and filtered water piped into the greenhouse) sprayed onto their roots, and bask in LED lights in air that’s enriched with CO2. The growing system and greenhouse are part of the “Eden ISS” project, in association with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Aeroponic farming is beginning to enter the home and specialty food markets, thanks to startups like Grove and AeroFarms. Since they rely on aeroponic mists and LED lights instead of sunlight and soil, these growing systems can support produce throughout the entire year, and in variable weather conditions. Including, apparently, the -20 °C (-4 °F) chill of Antarctica.

The Eden greenhouse. Photo: DLR via Flickr

This successful first harvest is a boost for scientists researching ways to grow produce on interplanetary missions where astronauts would be confined to tight quarters for several years. NASA already grew lettuce on the International Space Station earlier this year, but there are only so many salads you can eat before monotony sets in. This update from Antarctica shows that astronauts could replicate this growing system in space and cultivate a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in their ships  — and possibly, someday, even on Mars or the Moon.

NASA estimates that four crew members would need 24,000 pounds of food to sustain themselves on a three-year journey to Mars. Which can get very heavy and take up a lot of space. NASA is already working on light, durable packaging for interplanetary missions, but with a viable aeroponic system, they might not have to pack quite so much. Astronauts could grow at least a portion of their food on their ship, which would lighten the load (since there’s no soil required) and also give them access to fresh produce. Because freeze-dried ice cream must get old after a while.

This isn’t the only technology that might give astronauts more culinary options in space. The Japanese company Open Meals is working towards teleporting food through digitization and connected 3D bioprinters. If they reach their goal, astronauts could theoretically be snacking on tuna nigiri (or whatever else tickled their fancy) while orbiting the red planet. At least for now, though, they’ll have to settle for salad. Lots and lots of salad.

NASA and the Army are Developing the Future of Food Packaging

When I was a kid, my dad, who was in the military, showed me an MRE (meal ready to eat). To my impressionable young eyes, it was like looking at food from the future. MREs have come a long way since then, and two separate projects from NASA and the Department of Defense could show us the future of food packaging tech that will one day reach store shelves.

Mars is a long ways off and last I checked, there were no bodegas to pop in at along the way. That’s why NASA is creating new ways to store food to keep it from spoiling over the course of its planned three-year mission to Mars sometime in the 2030’s. WIRED UK has a great write up of the work the space agency is doing to prepare for the journey.

Food scientists at NASA need to think of ways of preventing food from spoiling or making astronauts sick, all while ensuring the food maintains its nutritional value, caloric levels and taste. Oh, and by the way, it can’t take up too much space given the cramped quarters of a spaceship. To achieve this, NASA is experimenting with different ways of freeze drying, thermostabilizing (blasting with heat in a sterile environment), and new types of moisture and oxygen resistant packaging.

Closer to home, Food Business News wrote about how the Department of Defense has a Combat Feeding Directorate that comes up with ways for food to travel and survive in harsh conditions. Because these ruggedized meals are carried by soldiers, this food packaging must also be compact and lightweight. During a recent talk at the Future Food-Tech conference, Stephen Moody, director of the Combat Feeding Directorate, said that food for the military has to withstand high altitudes as well as extreme hot and cold temperatures. He told the audience that “our products are required to last for three years in 80 degrees Fahrenheit and six months at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”

While these food packaging projects are limited to military and space applications right now, there’s a good chance breakthrough technology developed by these agencies will eventually wind up on our store shelves. These new types of packaging could possibly improve food safety during transportation to deliver aid to remote places, or help reduce food waste by extending shelf lives.

At the very least, perhaps we’ll get our hands on the technology that finally gave the Army shelf-stable, combat-ready pizza for MREs.

FarmBot Nasa

FarmBot Wants to Cultivate an Open-Source Future for Remote Farming

“Farm from anywhere” is a phrase we’re likely to hear more and more of as technology enables easier access to fresh, locally grown food. We just wrote about Babylon Micro-Farms, a remote, hydroponic farm you can keep inside your living room. There’s also a healthy urban farming market: thanks to companies like Farmshelf and Smallhold, restaurants, schools, and the average consumer get better access to fresh food and more involved in the food production itself.

But no one’s tackled the reinvention of farming quite like the folks at FarmBot.

FarmBot is basically precision agriculture for the people. When he launched the FarmBot project in 2011, founder Rory Aronson wanted to find a way to bring the benefits of remote farming to the everyman without the hefty price tag.

Precision agriculture normally involves technology like self-steering tractors and aerial drones that can make better use of resources. Because the method uses real-time data to understand weather, air quality, labor costs, and other factors, growers can make smarter decisions about how much and how often to employ resources. As its name suggests, precision agriculture provides meticulous records of every single step of the growing process.

Historically, it’s been the territory of industrial farmers. But thanks to Aronson, anyone with a little space and (considerably less) cash can get involved in food production.

Both FarmBot products, made up of cartesean coordinate robots along with software and documentation, can work on rooftops, in backyards, and can accommodate both small- and large-scale farming operations. It’s unclear whether the company means “farm from anywhere” literally, as it says on its website. But considering the highly customizable nature of the product, anyone with some tech know-how could theoretically hack the bot and make it work in any given climate.

A visual interface lets you “plan your garden like a videogame,” according to the company’s website. So the fact that the interface looks a bit like FarmVille is no coincidence. You can drag and drop plants into the virtual plot of land (below), build care regiments, and even scare away birds.

After the garden is planned, the machine plants seeds, measures soil moisture content and water, and can detect and destroy weeds. Email alerts tell a user when the crops are ready for harvest.

It’s also open source, including the hardware, software, and documentation. That means all design files, source code, and hardware specs are available for free on the company’s website, so anyone can customize their farm without having to fork over a bunch of extra money.

Right now, the FarmBot Genesis goes for $2,595 via the company’s website. The FarmBot Genesis XL, which is available for preorder, costs $3,295 and covers “421 percent the area of for just 38% more cost.” Shipments of both machines are expected to go out in May of this year.

Aronson would eventually like to get the price point down to $1,000. It’s unclear whether that will happen soon or if it’s some ways off. Meanwhile, FarmBot is making its way into universities and non-profits, and the company is working with NASA to develop open-source food production on Mars, the Moon, and deep space. Remote farming indeed.

All images courtesy of FarmBot.