From the INTERNATIONAL POTATO CENTER / CENTRO INTERNACIONAL DE LA PAPA and the “do you want fires with that interplanetary travel” department comes this interesting finding that I thought worth sharing for the sheer novelty of it. In case you’ve never seen the movie “The Martian“, our intrepid space castaway, played by Matt Damon, is able to survive long enough until a rescue mission can be launched by growing potatoes in Martian soil.
Indicators show potatoes can grow on Mars
CubeSat-contained environment experiment underway
The International Potato Center (CIP) launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. This Phase Two effort of CIP’s proof of concept experiment to grow potatoes in simulated Martian conditions began on February 14, 2016 when a tuber was planted in a specially constructed CubeSat contained environment built by engineers from University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima based upon designs and advice provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Ames Research Center (NASA ARC), California. Preliminary results are positive.
The Potatoes on Mars project was conceived by CIP to both understand how potatoes might grow in Mars conditions and also see how they survive in the extreme conditions similar to what parts of the world already suffering from climate change and weather shocks are already experiencing.
“Growing crops under Mars-like conditions is an important phase of this experiment,” says Julio Valdivia-Silva, a research associate with the SETI Institute who has worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center (NASA ARC) and now works at UTEC in Lima. “If the crops can tolerate the extreme conditions that we are exposing them to in our CubeSat, they have a good chance to grow on Mars. We will do several rounds of experiments to find out which potato varieties do best. “We want to know what the minimum conditions are that a potato needs to survive,” he said.
The CubeSat houses a container holding soil and the tuber. Inside this hermetically sealed environment the CubeSat delivers nutrient rich water, controls the temperature for Mars day and night conditions and mimics Mars air pressure, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Sensors constantly monitor these conditions and live streaming cameras record the soil in anticipation of the potato sprouting. Live streams of the experiment can be viewed at potatoes.space/mars or by going to the CIP website at http://www.CIPotato.org.
According to CIP potato breeder Walter Amoros, one advantage potato great genetic capacity for adaptation to extreme environments. CIP has tapped into that capacity by breeding potato clones that tolerate conditions such as soil salinity and drought, in order to help smallholder farmers grow food in marginal areas that could grow harsher under climate change.
In 2016, CIP brought Mars analog soil from the Pampas de La Joya desert in Southern Peru to its experimental station in La Molina, Lima. There CIP was able to show proof that potatoes could grow in this dry, salty soil with some help from fertilized Earth soil for both nutrition and structure.
“We have been looking at the very dry soils found in the southern Peruvian desert. These are the most Mars-like soils found on Earth.” Chris McKay of NASA ARC. “This [research] could have a direct technological benefit on Earth and a direct biological benefit on Earth,” says Chris McKay of NASA ARC.
From the initial experiment, CIP scientists concluded that future Mars missions that hope to grow potatoes will have to prepare soil with a loose structure and nutrients to allow the tubers to obtain enough air and water to allow it to tuberize.
“It was a pleasant surprise to see that potatoes we’ve bred to tolerate abiotic stress were able to produce tubers in this soil,” Amoros said. He added that one of the best performing varieties was very salt-tolerant from the CIP breeding program for adaptation to subtropical lowlands with tolerance to abiotic stress that was also recently released as a variety in Bangladesh for cultivation in coastal areas with high soil salinity.
Amoros noted that whatever their implications for Mars missions, the experiments have already provided good news about potato’s potential for helping people survive in extreme environments on Earth.
“The results indicate that our efforts to breed varieties with high potential for strengthening food security in areas that are affected, or will be affected by climate change, are working,” he said.
The Potatoes on Mars project has been conducted by CIP with the advice of NASA ARC and construction of the CubeSat technology was done by student engineers and their advisors at UTEC. NASA and UTEC scientist Julio Valdivia-Silva collaborated extensively with teams of UTEC and CIP scientists on both phases of this experiment. He identified the soil from Pampas de La Joya desert and led the effort to construct the sophisticated CubeSat.
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The International Potato Center, known by its Spanish acronym CIP, was founded in 1971 as a root and tuber research-for-development institution delivering sustainable solutions to the pressing world problems of hunger, poverty, and climate change. CIP is truly a global center, with headquarters in Lima, Peru and offices in 20 developing countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Working closely with our partners, CIP seeks to achieve food security, improved nutrition, and gender equity for poor people in the developing world in the midst of climate change. CIP furthers its mission through rigorous research, innovation in science and technology, and capacity strengthening regarding root and tuber farming and food systems.
What about gravity? Will the reduced gravity on Mars not have an effect?
(And, although I loved the book, I almost didn’t go see the movie because they chose probably the most science-ignorant actor – Damon – to play Whatney. Who can forget that stirring exclamation, “I’m gonna have to science the sh*t out of this,” spoken like a true jock-for-brains before taking his high school chemistry final for the 3rd time (and a sentence that was not in the book).
I agree gravity is not something that they should overlook before concluding anything. But it is probably quite difficult to replicate here.
They have grown plants on both Skylab and ISS. If plants can handle zero G, it can’t imagine why the lower gravity of Mars would be a problem.
A recent new favorite in my universe is the white sweet potatoe. A one-pounder microwaves beautifully, and in a few minutes is ready to receive 2 tbsp of butter and some seasoning. After my 3 hour mountain-biking loop, with 3500 feet of climbing … yumyumyumyumyum.
I find the whites have a much better texture than the orange variety, and I like the flavor better.
Incidentally, everyone calls orange sweet potatoes “yams”, but that is incorrect. Real yams have a covering that almost looks like bark, are much less sweet, and are from the lily family, rather than from the morning-glory family like the sweet potato. So next time beloved family members or friends pipe up at Thanksgiving, you can bitch-slap them with that critical factoid, in perfect keeping with spirit of the holiday 😉
[Butter now you must address the issues of getting that pat of butter produced locally on Mars. .mod]
You didn’t really mean to mess with my memories of sweet potatoes did you ?
Thought not.
Best potato I ever had was at a lounge at London Heathrow. Much more flavourful than the typical Canadian variety.
Funny that, I’m personally curious of seeing how a yellow sweet potato tastes, I only know white ones (there’s a few different white varieties, too). Never seen a yellow one around here.
no sure if available in your area but we used to grow Kennebec breed potato.
good taste, easy cooking for variety of outputs (fries, etc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennebec_(potato)
Peel tried to prevent the potatoe famine. The corn was new tech in Ireland. Morning glory seeds are psychoactive. Hemp is good food to grow in space. CO2 promotes growth.
The push for climate change prevention is the same fear that manifested as our worst tribal superstitions. Human sacrifice to appease the…volcano. Yup.
We are all tired of it now. Al Gore needs to watch Joe and The Volcano with Tom Hanks.
Mars was where carbon taxes were invented in the first place. By Liberal Martians who sold pyramids to the Egyptians. They are among us.
Carbon taxes pay for the star gate to the Sirius region.
Woooooooooooooo!
Talk about volcano’s This one has been going for almost 3 months and barely mentioned anywhere:
https://avo.alaska.edu/activity/Bogoslof.php
Yes. That was a secret randomly chosen location where they tossed Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin out of politics in a black knight-rider plastic helicopter? All hell broke loose. Solid burn…
I always wondered where potato peelers came from!
(historical note: British policemen were originally called peelers after Peel who introduced them)
Because of the distance the diameter of the sun would be much smaller and the sunlight intensity much lower compared to Earth, something like a perpetually cloudy, overcast day. Also very cold. The movie had it wrong. Would need a complete greenhouse, extra light and all.
I took great offense at the line in the book that raw potatoes are disgusting. I eat raw potatoes with great delight, though I don’t do it very often — maybe steal one or two out of the pot after the wife has cut them up for boiling. Of course, I like raw mushrooms too, so maybe I’m strange?
ummm… maybe just a little, strange that is. :))
Now, if you want to talk about stealing a taste of chocolate chip cookie dough, that’s a whole different story… 😛
Raw potatoes are good sliced thin and soaked in vinegar. Used to be one of my favorite snacks as a kid.
The ethics of putting alien life on Mars.
I think it may be immoral to put potatoes, or bacteria for that matter on Mars. Maybe there is life there already. I doubt it, but maybe.
Imagine terraforming Mars and killing all of the native life inadvertently.
Mars!….leave it alone. 97% of earth’s oceans are unexplored.
What now?
One flaw in the theory:
Food going into space is irradiated. So the potatoes would be sterile. It is all sterile. It is done to keep astronauts from getting sick.
Loved the book, and the movie. But that is a flaw nobody seems to mention.
Nothing a tin foil hat couldn’t fix. 🙂
Anthony: typo: change to “fries” in:
It was BAKED potatoes.
Over 3.8 billion years at least a hundred million tons of Earth material that has escaped our atmosphere has landed on Mars. Some will have contained remnants of life, perhaps viable life.
Oh great news all we have to do to colonize Mars is send the Irish first to terraform the planet with potato harvesting.
Belgian astronauts will love these Irish French fries.
When you’re clinically depressed, (from eating carbs) shocks come very easily.
And where did that come from, not Mars I don’t think
But isn’t future technology going to be so great. we all agree on that, so why is a there a Rescue Requirement?
What did these bozos do to require rescuing?
Anyway, eating too many tatties will turn you into one, we all know what our mothers told us:-
If you don’t actually physically become a potato, you become a bloated & brain-dead blob – isn’t 7 billion enough of them already
Almost makes you believe in a God.
Somebody somewhere has an incredible, if not rather wicked, sense of humour
If my memory is correct about the film an evil Dr Mann was included in the plot.
Just like real life really.
You are thinking of climate change the movie.
All a waste of time……. even if potatoes could be grown on Mars, the atmospheric pressure is too low to get a pan of water hot enough to cook them 😉
Water will boil just fine on mars. 🙂
Actually, Sutton may be correct.
The boiling point (vapour pressure) of water in a 6 mb atmosphere is 0ºc, which means water will always be frozen on Mars. To get a liquid, and some boiling, you need to raise the atmosphere to 9 mb. This gives a boiling point of just 5ºc, which is not quite enough to boil your spuds…. 😉
Ralph
Well, you can boil them, but not cook
Here’s a question.. How effective is a microwave at those pressures.. does the water in the potato remain long enough to cook it?
Make your microwave air tight.
These Mars-like conditions they’re on about, did they include cosmic radiation let in by Mar’s no-magnetosphere, decidedly Mars-like condition? No? That lethal-to-humans thing you get from the cosmic radiation let in by Mar’s no-magnetosphere Mars-like condition, was that accommodated in these Mars-like conditions? No? It could be me but I reckon these microwaved taters are for microwaved roughly humanoid settlers from NASA.
The we-must-colonize-Mars robots are the only fertile thing around here: They’re the market the expanding socialism-for-scientists “researchers” pander to.
Interesting. What they don’t say, is that they were growing these spuds in an atmosphere that has much more CO2 than we have on Earth. This is the reason why it can work in such a thin atmosphere, because plants breathe and transpire CO2, not the masses of ‘useless’ N2 that we have on Earth.
Earth’s atmosphere is 1000 mb, of which 400 ppm is CO2.
Mars’ atmosphere is 6 mb, of which 950,000 ppm is CO2.
Thus:
Earth’s CO2 partial pressure is 0.4 mb.
Mars’ CO2 partial pressure is 5.7 mb.
(Please check my math, as I have been known to get the decimal point wrong….)
So the partial pressure concentration of CO2 on Mars is much greater than on Earth. And it is obviously partial pressure that counts as far as plants are concerned, not total pressure, and so these spuds can grow quite well on Mars. All you need is a greenhouse to keep the temperature up a bit, and use the normal Martian atmosphere.
Which rather suggests that widespread agriculture would be possible from day-one on Mars – with vast equatorial greenhouses feeding a large population, and converting Martian CO2 to animal-friendly O2. And C4 plants like maize and sugar cane would do equally well in this environment, as these C3 potatoes.
This also suggests that a high concentration of CO2 is good for life, both on Earth and on Mars. But we all knew that anyway, even if the Greeney brigade continue to deny it.
Ralph
Excellent! Mars has a comparable amount of CO2 as Earth, and this is why I’ve attempted to press for anyone to show how much heat is trapped on Mars. Did CO2 lose its ‘greenhouse gas’ property? Here’s a chance to showcase your science with an almost monolithic layer of the ‘heat trapping’, ‘greenhouse gas’ Carbon Dioxide. Yet Mars sheds 200F degrees of heat each night.
BTW, the fact that Mars has an atmosphere of 95% CO2 is a clear indication that no ‘life as we know it’ exists there. ‘Life as we know it’ equates to all carbon based life forms, and we know that carbon based life forms consume CO2
My only remaining question, is can these spuds exist on gaseous water? At the Martian 6 mb atmospheric pressure the vapour pressure temperature at 6 mb is 0ºc. So if the Martian greenhouse is kept at, say, 15ºc, then all the water would be gaseous – even in the soil.
Many orchids can exist on water vapour and CO2 gas, but can these potatoes do it too?
R
So…they didn’t use martian soil. They brought in water and nutrients. And they kept it at a temperature completely different from the mars surface.
It sounds like they just grew potatoes in a greenhouse
The point is, that you don’t need much of a pressure vessel to grow plants on Mars. Now that is a huge saving in the cost of agriculture and maintaining a colony on Mars.
(Although I think they would need to raise the atmospheric pressure to 9mb to keep the water liquid. Perhaps someone can confirm that figure.)
R
The greenhouse had Mars in big letters written on the side.
Typo:
“do you want fires with that”
“do you want fries with that”
R
>> Radiation.
Although it is not mentioned, since this was a cubesat I presume the experiment was in orbit, and therfore subject to greater radiation. It is a very poor press release, which does not make clear if the cubesat was earthbound or in orbit.
R
Actually you can’t grow potatoes under Martian conditions. They can probably survive the thin (but CO2-rich) atmosphere, the soil, and conceivably even the UV radiation (they do well at high altitudes on Earth), but they would inevitably be killed by the low night temperatures. Potatoes are an extremely adaptable and hardy plant, but it is very sensitive to frost.
But, to claim that potatoes cannot grow under the “low night-time” temperatures of Mars, you MUST measure the actual temperatures of the potato itself. Not of the “air” 2 meters (or 2 inches even) above ground where the potato is not present. (Leaves excepted – unless those leaves are ALSO confirmed harmed by the low temperatures as well.)
Potatoes grow underground at 4-5 inches below soil level. In fact, in the potato-growing regions of the US near Idaho Falls ID, the 4-inch soil temperature IS in EVERY daily weather forecast and overnight weather report. Always, that temperature is ten-thirty degrees higher than the 2-meter “official” air temperature. Yes, there is a growing season in Idaho – there is a six-month winter up there in Idaho as well of frequent -15 and -25 degrees F overnight air temperatures as well.
To answer a question about overnight 5-inch soil temperatures below Mars soil near the Martian equator (surely no one would expect anything to grow near their polar regions (unless harvesting the frozen CO2-ice is the intent of the polar settlement) the short Martian nights may be compatible with temperate or equatorial Martian overnight soil temperatures – at 5 inch below the soil. I will make no claim for the actual overnight soil temperatures at different days-of-a-Martian year and different Martian latitudes and elevations and solar exposures (slope of the land), but I will reject any claim that does not address trying to estimate the soil temperatures.
You obviously don’t know anything whatsoever about potatoes. Even a few hours below freezing completely destroys the leaves. And they need those leaves you know. They produce the carbohydrates that go into the potatoes. The potatoes don’t grow by some kind of magic underground.
And yes indeed, there is a growing season in Idaho. July temperature in Boise is approximately the same as in Columbus, Ohio (and warmer than in Buffalo, N Y.).
Six ‘Climate Change’ and one ‘weather shock’
“also see how they survive in the extreme conditions similar to what parts of the world already suffering from climate change and weather shocks are already experiencing”.
I wonder if they reduced the ‘Climate Change’ score because of the word ‘weather’?
CC Score = 1.42% (12/848)
Just a small killer to the theory from the book/movie potato bit:
Food sent into space, especially vacuum packed food like this, would be irradiated. All food they send is that way.
So the potatoes would be sterile. They wouldn’t be able to be grown.
So 100 million years from now, long after all life disappeared on earth because CO2 finally went below ~140 for too long, the potato people of Mars finally send their first astronauts to try to live on “that curious wet planet”. In the course of exploration they come across one of these –
– confirming thousands of years of what had only recently been dismissed as religious dogma.
The real question is which strain grows best there, indica or sativa?
The atmospheric pressure on Mars is 0.6% of that on Earth. That means there is no way there is enough atmosphere for plants. Sorry. Also, sunlight is very attenuated there–enough for plants? I doubt this experiment did these 2 things properly.