Space-grown soybeans

Soybeans can be grown as a crop in space to provide both food and serve as an atmospheric scrubber for long-term space travel, affirms Tom Corbin, researcher on the mission that put his firm, DuPont, Inc. (Wilmington, DE; www.dupont.com), on the map as the first company ever to complete a major crop growth cycle in space. The 97-d research initiative, which concluded with the return of Space Shuttle Atlantis in October 2002, validated that soybean seeds planted and nurtured by DuPont scientists in the lab had germinated, developed into plants, flowered, and produced new seedpods in space aboard the International Space Station.

During the studies that ensued, the space-grown seeds were manually split - with one part of the seed sown to grow and the other half ground to examine its biological characteristics. DuPont researchers discovered that the space-grown soybeans when compared with their earth-grown counterparts, were similar in physical and biological characteristics, developmental rate, morphology and seed yields. Further, the space-grown seeds were higher in sugar content, but lower in oil and amino acid content, presumably due to the higher CO2 levels on the International Space Station.