Whether plants can grow aboard the International Space Station (ISS) through their unique sense of gravityis being tested as the idea that plants have all five human senses is still moot.
Following the sixth SpaceX commercial resupply mission's delivery of new supplies to the ISS, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency researchers will conduct a second run of the Plant Gravity Sensing study, NASA reported.
How plants sense their growth direction without gravity will be determined in the Plant Gravity Sensing study by examining the plant's mechanisms, which determine its growth direction.
In general, plants respond to gravity in two ways. Positively, plant roots grow down into the soil, and negatively, the stems grow upward to reach the sunlight, according to Sci-News.
Results of the Plant Gravity Sensing study may have effects for cultivating plants for long-duration space missions and for higher crop yield in farming.
In the study, the researchers will analyze the behavior of calcium concentrations in the cells of plants initially grown in microgravity when exposed to gravity similar to that on Earth or a 1g environment afterwards.
The cellular process of formation in a small flowering plant related to cabbage called thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, will also be examined.
The Plant Gravity Sensing investigation principal investigator Hitoshi Tatsumi, Ph.D., said plants cultivated in space are "not experienced with gravity or the direction of gravity and may not be able to form gravity sensors that respond to the specific direction of gravity changes."
Tatsumi is also an associate professor at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan.