Cowpeas and pinto beans: Performance and yields of candidate space crops in the laboratory biosphere closed ecological system

Closed bioregenerative life support systems: Applicability to hot deserts

“…It was found that the productivity of wheat, especially its photosynthetic constituent, is a nearly linear function of incident PPF up to 2.5 times the summer sunlight intensity, taken as the integrated (Bugbee et al, 1989) or instantaneous value (Tikhomirov, 1996). A considerable rise in plant productivity with increasing PPF and CO 2 concentration (up to 2000 ppm, which is 5 times CO 2 content in atmospheric air) was observed by Qin et al (2008) for lettuce, by Wheeler et al (1996Wheeler et al ( , 2008aWheeler et al ( , 2008b for wheat, potato, tomato, and soybean, and by Nelson et al (2008) for pinto bean. For example, the pinto bean matured and harvested 20 days earlier than is typical for this variety in the field.…”

“…Its performance depends on light intensity [photosynthetic photon flux, PPF, 400 to 700 nm, which accounts for 32% of the total Sun irradiance (Sager et al, 1992)], temperature, carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations, and air velocity over the plant canopy, which must be controlled and monitored in the system (Bugbee et al, 1989;Wheeler et al, 1996Wheeler et al, , 2008aWheeler et al, , 2008bAndre et al, 1989Andre et al, , 1999Borodina et al, 2003;Nelson et al, 2003aNelson et al, , 2008Qin et al, 2008;Kitaya 2003;Kitaya et al, 2008;McKeehen et al, 1996;Allen et al, 1999Allen et al, , 2003Berkovich, 2008).…”

“…The integrated efficiency of these processes, determined on an energy basis as the ratio of the biomass energy content to photons energy content, is a highly illustrative characteristic of the possibilities of different growing environments (Table 1). The above processes were experimentally studied by monitoring PPF, gas exchange (photosynthetic rate in mol CO 2 /(m 2 s), respiration rate in mol O 2 /(m 2 s)), fresh and dry plant mass, and plant tissue composition by Bugbee et al (1989); Wheeler et al (1996Wheeler et al ( , 2008aWheeler et al ( , 2008b; Nelson et al (2008), and other researchers for wheat, tomato, potato, lettuce, soybean, cowpeas, pinto bean, and many other higher plants. It was found that the productivity of wheat, especially its photosynthetic constituent, is a nearly linear function of incident PPF up to 2.5 times the summer sunlight intensity, taken as the integrated (Bugbee et al, 1989) or instantaneous value (Tikhomirov, 1996).…”

Agriculture for Space: People and Places Paving the Way

“…The atmospherically closed structure was nearly 1.2 ha in area and contained human living quarters, multiple ecosystems with a wide range of plants and animals, complex environmental management and control capabilities, including sophisticated pressure damping systems to reduce leakage (Dempster, 2008), and a large agricultural area of approximately 2000 m 2 with 2720 m 3 of soil, which provided about 80 percent of the food for the eight humans living inside the facility for 2 years (Silverstone and Nelson, 1996;Alling et al, 2005). The scale and complexity of Biosphere 2 was larger than what most space agencies might envision for early missions, but their goals of understanding closed ecological systems and bioregenerative approaches for human life support provided insights into the challenges for agricultural and biological approaches for space life support.…”

“…Certainly one of the most impressive efforts ever to study humans and closed ecological systems was the privately sponsored Biosphere 2 facility, designed and constructed near Tucson, Arizona, US in the late 1980s and early 1990s Dempster 2008). The atmospherically closed structure was nearly 1.2 ha in area and contained human living quarters, multiple ecosystems with a wide range of plants and animals, complex environmental management and control capabilities, including sophisticated pressure damping systems to reduce leakage (Dempster, 2008), and a large agricultural area of approximately 2000 m 2 with 2720 m 3 of soil, which provided about 80 percent of the food for the eight humans living inside the facility for 2 years (Silverstone and Nelson, 1996;Alling et al, 2005).…”