High-Level Project Summary
We conceived an integrated greenhouse which allows to grow several species of vegetables with an aeroponic cultivation system. The advantage of our COOBE is the high surface area on which plants can grow with reduced water usage. Plants roots are continuously sprayed with a solution containing all the nutrients needed. Air and water will be monitored and recycled to ensure the optimal conditions for plant growth. The limited amount of available space requires genetically engineered plants able to grow faster and in less space. COOBE could provide fresh food to the crew for the entire journey, and can be assembled with other units in a modular way.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
COOBE is a cubic hollow structure with four available faces for plant cultivation. The surface of each face has steps to maximize the useful area and is equipped with holes to host tightly packed plants. The whole structure is placed in a bigger air tight container to confine and monitor the atmosphere composition, humidity and temperature conditions needed by plants.
Water supply is granted by atomizing nozzles on a pipe placed inside the cube, with flanges on the two unoccupied faces in order to connect it to the external water supply system. This is intended to be composed by a main water tank with pumps to circulate the nutritive solution and secondary tanks containing mother solutions of nutrients to be reintegrated in the main water flow.
Illumination is insured by white LED strips mounted on the edges of the external case, which provide a uniform light on each face of the inner cube. All parameters (i.e. light, temperature, humidity, air and water composition, pH, electrical conductivity) are monitored by means of sensors placed inside the cube and in the outer case. Access to the plants for harvesting food is granted by moving panels on the outside shell. The combination of this greenhouse with genomic engineered plants gives a refined optimized system. Engineered plants confer the great opportunity to have an easiest and accelerated plant growth, a more productive harvest, and also more nourishing final products for the astronaut's food requirement.
Space Agency Data
Resource data from Space App Challenge site were used to identify the objective of this challenge.
Hackathon Journey
We found this experience very inspiring and intense, we learned how to work as a team optimizing the short available time to come to a conclusion of this work. We chose this challenge because it was a way to unify our personal interests and competences into one single project.
References
[1] I. A. Lakhiar et al., Modern plant cultivation technologies in agriculture under controlled environment: a review on aeroponics", JOURNAL OF PLANT INTERACTIONS, 13(1), 338-352, 2018
[2] C. Brooks et al., Effcient Gene Editing in Tomato in the First Generation Using the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-Associated9 System", Plant Physiology, 166, 1292-1297, 2014
[3] J. F. Li et al., Multiplex and homologous recombination-mediated genome editing in Arabidopsis and Nicotiana benthamiana using guide RNA and Cas9 ", Nat Biotechnol, 31, 688{691, 2013
[4] T. Li et al., Domestication of wild tomato is accelerated by genome editing", Nat Biotechnol, 2018
[5] F. Wolter et al., Plant breeding at the speed of light: the power of CRISPR/Cas to generate directed genetic diversity at multiple sites", BMC Plant Biology, 19, 176, 2019
[6] Y.Zhang et al., A CRISPR way for accelerating improvement of food crops", Nature Food, 202, 200-205
[7] S. Soyk et al., Variation in the owering gene SELF PRUNING 5G promotes day-neutrality and early yield in tomato", Nature Genetics, 49(1), 2017
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.