University of Wisconsin-Madison biology student Michelle Graham helped prepare Fast Plants for a 1995 shuttle launch.
This plant growing chamber, developed by the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics, has housed Fast Plants and potatoes on space shuttles.
Photos by Jeff Miller. © UW-Madison News and Public Affairs
In November, scientists and students will collaborate on an experiment to see how plants grow in space. Here's how it works: Astronauts will grow high-flying plants in the Space Shuttle Columbia. At the same time, up to 50,000 students will grow identical control plants in their classrooms.
The plants in question are specially bred "Wisconsin Fast Plants" that go from seed to flower to seed in just 40 days. The hope is that the experiment's extraterrestrial allure will attract students to the study of biology and other sciences.
After the August announcement that Fast Plants had, for the first time, completed an entire life cycle in space, plants-in-space no longer seems pie-in-the-sky. "This is really a historic time for us because it's the first time plants have been grown from seed in space 
and subsequently were planted and able to grow," said Mary Musgrave, of Louisiana State University's Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge.
Growing aboard Mir, the Russian space station, the plants achieved what Musgrave called "a real milestone in plant space biology" despite a three-day power blackout caused by a collision with a supply ship. "This opens the door for future research with other types of plants that could be used for food and atmosphere regeneration" on long space flights.
Space is short in space
But since space is scarce on space ships, the whole procedure must be supremely efficient, and that means developing systems productive enough -- and reliable enough -- to make meaningful amounts of food and oxygen.
That's where the upcoming Fast Plants experiment comes in. Nobody really knows how normally plants grow in the minimal gravity of outer space. While the Russians have done extensive plant research since the inception of their space program, until this summer no seeds had ever been formed in space.
In November, the National Space Agency of Ukraine, NASA, other researchers, and classrooms across the country will collaborate on the space-bound experiment. (To enroll in the Collaborative Ukrainian Experiment: Teachers And Students Investigating Plants In Space.)
Students on the ground will plant their seeds on Nov. 7, 12 days before the scheduled launching on Nov. 19. If the launch goes on schedule, the controls will be the same age as the test plants. But that's just for excitement's sake. The data will be useful anyway.
The scientists -- student and otherwise -- will then track three growth variables: average height at 14 days, average number of days to first open flower, and average number of seeds per pod.
These parameters were chosen, says Jan Joseph, project assistant at the Wisconsin Fast Plants program, because "Fast Plants has always emphasized the life cycle as a teaching tool, having the plants go through the entire life cycle." And 14 days "is a kind of checkpoint, we have always used that" in tracking plant growth.
The researchers will also look at how pollen gets transmitted and how sperm moves to the egg. This information could help scientists understand why spacebound plants are somewhat less efficient than earthbound ones, says University of Wisconsin-Madison plant pathologist Paul Williams, the University of Wisconsin-Madison plant pathologist who invented Fast Plants.
The Internet will be used to compare growth data on space-bound plants to earthbound ones, and to evaluate the project. The virtual absence of gravity in space could affect many aspects of plant growth in ways that are just now coming into focus. To take an obvious example, gravity guides roots down and growing stems upward.
Williams invented Fast Plants 25 years ago by breeding a kind of brassica (a relative of cabbage) so it would mature and set seed in just 35 to 40 days. He wanted to produce a plant that would allow students to do real science before they graduated -- or got bored.
Over the years, Fast Plants have become a mainstay in teaching plant science, genetics and biology.
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