SPACE GARDEN-BED: FARMERS EXPLORING THE ORBIT

On the Cosmonautics Day, the experts of Novorossiysk branch of the Federal Centre for the Assessment of Safety and Quality of Agricultural Products, a Federal State Budgetary Institution, reported about the peculiarities of plant growing under zero gravity. The history of space farming started even before Yury Gagarin’s flight. In 1960, the seeds of corn, wheat, peas, and onions were sent to orbit in the Soviet Sputnik-5 together with Belka and Strelka dogs. Lettuce, cabbage, and beans were the first plants that germinated from the seeds in orbit, in Kosmos-110 (1966). Onions were the first edible harvest in Salyut-4 (1975). Cosmonaut Georgy Grechko faced a problem with watering under zero gravity in 1975: instead of flowing downwards, water turned into huge drops flying around the station, and had to be chased down with napkins. Nevertheless, wheat produced space seeds multiple times, too. In 1999, Apogee super-club wheat cultivar was grown from seeding to harvesting and produced full value yield at the Mir station. Lada hot-house at the International Space Station became a place for 17 scientific experiments of Russian cosmonauts from 2002 to 2011. They grew peas, wheat, barley, radish, and lettuce. One of the most important results was four successive generations of peas.
Source: https://agroexpert.press/innovation/kosmicheskaya-gryadka-zemledelczy-osvaivayut-orbitu/