Zero Gravity Solutions to study effects on crop plant growth

Zero Gravity Solutions and Intrinsyx Technologies Corp. are teaming up to send BAM-FX to the International Space Station on the SpaceXFalcon 9 Dragon vehicle to study the effects of microgravity on crop plant growth and nutrition.

The hope is to receive positive results to create advanced life support systems that will work for long-term space missions.

Funding is provided by a grant from NanoRacks and a high school student project in Germany called V3PO. The V3PO project is funded by a crowdfunding program from BASF, and the students will experiment on a plant-associated fungal inhibitor.

BAM-FX will use broccoli for experiments of effects on microgravity. The experiments will be supervised by ZGSI’s chief science officer and co-founder John Wayne Kennedy as well as John Freeman and Chetan Angadi from Intrinsyx. Dan Saldana from Valley Christian High School will also help with the experiments, which will be conducted by students from the high school.

“The ability to apply our past space-flight experiences in order to test out our existing agricultural product, BAM-FX, in space is a rare and exciting opportunity to potentially help with crop plant growth and the production of zinc bio-fortified vegetables in space,” Kennedy said.

The SpaceXFalcon 9 is currently scheduled to launch on March 21 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“A zinc bio-fortified broccoli floret could be very useful for further complementing an astronauts existing healthy diet,” Freeman said.