Plants for Space (P4S) is an Australian headquartered collaborative initiative linking international partners focused on providing plant-based solutions for the sustainable production of nutrition and biomaterials for Space and Earth.

With over 30 partners, we have combined multidisciplinary skillsets in Plant and Food Science, Systems and Process Engineering, Nutrition, Psychology, Law, and Education to explore the fundamental breakthroughs required to develop fit for purpose biomanufactured products.

We are in our foundational year and have funding to at least 2031. Our programs will use molecular-based techniques to deliver food from plants: tailored ‘pick & eat’ crops to supplement dietary needs, and a suite of ‘complete nutrition’ plants to solve the challenge of total caloric replacement. Plant biofactories and bioprocessing technologies developed will be vital to sustain closed environments for extra-terrestrial settlement, and provide new advances for on-Earth manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and plant-based foods. Our aim is to develop engineering solutions and new experimental platforms that have undergone rigorous lifecycle and techno-economic analyses, and explore legal and ethical frameworks to ensure our innovations are fit-for-purpose and readily translatable to meet current timelines. We are also instigating a bold, long-term approach to education and training to inspire more students into STEM subjects and a new generation of Space-fluent researchers.

P4S aims to provides a touchpoint for plant and food focused researchers, to deliver the efficiencies and synergies needed internationally to deliver plant-based technologies that will assist in enabling sustainable long-term deep-space habitation as part of the Artemis moon-to-mars framework. We also recognise the importance and value of translating many of these innovations to Earth to improve the sustainability of food, plant and bioresource production on Earth.

This presentation will outline our programs, initial projects, touchpoints for synergies with the broader research community, and offer opportunities for collaboration and leverage of P4S internationally.

For more information see www.plants4space.com.

Artemis III will bring humans to the surface of the moon for the first time in this century. LEAF, which stands for Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora, will study how the Lunar environment affects the germination and growth of plants that may be used to feed astronauts of the future. The Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) β (“Beta”) mission applies system biology and engineering to investigate the effects of partial gravity and elevated radiation in a cabin-like atmosphere on the short-term organism-wide physiological responses of model space crops. LEAF β aims to answer:

1) How will biophysical stressors in space environments past LEO affect growth, photosynthetic productivity, and nutritional quality? (Figure 1)
2) To what extent do space crops vary in resilience to oxidative stress (via induction of pathways that detoxify reactive oxygen species)? (Figure 2)
3) Which biomolecular signaling pathways are triggered by Lunar stress?
4) What genomic traits afford stress-resilience and hence space-crop fitness for space life support?

The LEAF β payload (Figure 3) will protect the plants within from excessive Lunar sunlight, radiation, and the vacuum of space, while observing their photosynthesis, growth, and responses to stress. The experiment includes a plant growth chamber with an isolated atmosphere, housing red and green varieties of Brassica rapa (Wisconsin Fast Plants®), Wolffia (duckweed), and Arabidopsis thaliana (Figure 4). Instrumentation includes a Lunar Environment Monitoring (LEM) System to measure radiation, acceleration, and Lunar gravity; a Plant Habitat System (PHS) to monitor photosynthesis and control the plant growth conditions; and a Plant Health Imaging (PHI) System to monitor seed germination, seedling growth, and morphology. By having astronauts collect seedling samples for return to Earth, the research team will be able to apply advanced system biology tools to study physiological responses at a molecular level. Only one other payload has studied plants on the moon; the 2019 Chinese Chang’e 4 mission provided a picture of a 4-day old cotton sprout then suffered thermal control failure. The Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) research will provide the first, comprehensive assessment of organism-wide effects of the Lunar environment, reducing risks for sustainable off-planet crop production and paving the way for a future sustained Lunar habitation and missions to Mars. This presentation reviews the LEAF β science objectives, hypotheses, and β payload concept to be developed for the Artemis III mission.

Given the scheduled crewed long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars under the NASA – Artemis program (2030-2040), there is a critical need to cultivate genetically modified (GM) plants for space applications. These plants are essential not only as a primary food source but also as potential sources of pharmaceuticals and materials for repairs, including plastics. However, due to ethical concerns about GM foods consumption for consumer sensory tests, it is essential to develop Machine Learning (ML) models and Digital Twins with non-GM plants to simulate the process without the need for humans to taste these GM foods on Earth. Hence, this study aimed to assess six different leafy greens (sweet basil, Thai basil, coriander, kale, lettuce and Beetroot) using a low-cost and portable electronic nose (e-nose), which were used as inputs of seven ML models to predict plant physiology (Models 1-6) and consumers acceptability (Model 7). These leafy greens were grown in three robotic farms (Farmbots), and e-nose measurements along with the ground-truth physiological data (stomatal conductance, total conductance, transpiration and leaf vapour pressure) using the Licor 600 were obtained per plant before harvest. Leafy greens were harvested on the day that the consumer sensory acceptability session was conducted. For this session, 59 participants were recruited and used the BioSensory© app to record the questionnaire data for the ML Model 7 ground truth. Sessions were conducted in two simulated immersive environments (Earth and Space). Models 1-6 were developed per leafy green using the Bayesian Regularisation algorithm, while Model 7 was developed using the data from all samples and the Levenberg Marquardt algorithm. Based on the correlation coefficient (R) and slope (b), Models 1-6 had very high accuracy in predicting plant physiology (R=0.91 to 0.96; b=0.83 to 0.93); likewise, Model 7 resulted in high accuracy (R=0.93; b=0.87) for consumers acceptability predictions in both Earth and Space simulated environments. These models are the foundation for creating digital twins, enabling advanced simulations to evaluate plant physiology, consumer sensory acceptability, and other sensory experiences of future GM plants in Earth and Space environments. Moreover, these models can facilitate the management of growth and utilisation of plant resources in Space, tailoring sensory characteristics such as flavour, aroma, and texture to meet specific requirements.

Various challenges exist in the cultivation of plants towards the realization of future lunar farms. One of these challenges includes the limited resources, like especially water usage, as well as harsh environments like low gravity and intense radiation, which differ from Earth and are expected to have distinct effects. JAXA has conducted several experiments on plant biology missions under microgravity conditions using Plant Experiment Unit (PEU) which can give controlled light cycle. Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) placed the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) can provide temperature and humidity control for PEU. It has become apparent from such experiments that microgravity significantly affects plants growth (Resist tubule, Aniso tubule, Ferulate). Based on the technical insights gained from these experiments, three experiments: Plant UV-B mission, Plant Cell Division mission, Space Surface Spirulina mission are prepared. Plant UV-B mission design to elucidate the synergistic effects of high ultraviolet stress on plants in addition to gravitational effects, and gain insights into resistance to those effects. Plant Cell Division mission aims to understand the effects of the space environment on plant growth through observation of single-cell level cell division by Confocal Space Microscope (COSMIC), then provides hints for plant production in space. Space Surface Spirulina mission verify the biological stability of Spirulina, which allows efficient protein intake and CO2 processing, in the space environment, and develop highly efficient, resource-saving cultivation methods. Here we introduce an overview of these plant biology missions and the experimental equipment owned by JAXA.

On earth, plant carbon fixation, a vital process for capturing energy, profoundly influences various aspects of our lives, including food, clothing fibers, medicines, building materials, and even the production of human therapeutics. However, current plant biotechnology relies on a limited repertoire of genetic parts, restricting the customization of spatiotemporal and conditional gene expression patterns. Synthetic gene circuits have the potential to integrate multiple customizable input signals through a processing unit constructed from biological parts to produce a predictable and programmable output. Such technology would supercharge our engineering efforts to add new traits to crops both on earth and for space.

Here, we present here a suite of recombinase-based gene circuits to achieve activation of transgenes in YES, OR, and AND gates, repression in NOT, NOR, and NAND gates, and both activation and repression in an A NIMPLY B gate (Lloyd et al., 2022). This work demonstrates the successful manipulation of plant gene expression, both in isolated cells and stably transformed multicellular plants, by utilizing specific developmental cues to trigger activation. Prototyping of our system in the model plant Arabidopsis has been very successful, with efforts now on translating this research into crops and to confer traits of importance for sustaining life away from earth as part of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Plants For Space.

This highly compact programmable gene circuit platform provides new capabilities for engineering sophisticated transcriptional programs and previously unrealized traits into plants.