PLANT TISSUE CULTURE IN SPACE BIOLOGY by KHUSHI PANCHAL

Development of Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) as complement of physical and chemical life support systems is necessary for future space explorations, Martian missions, and the construction of lunar bases. Higher plants produce edible biomass and oxygen and recycle water, absorb carbon dioxide, and improve the atmosphere of closed environments and support psychological health of astronauts. Because of these multiple functions, plants are essential components of BLSS. Since the beginning of manned space flight, a wide range of information on higher plant performance in microgravity has been obtained from experiments performed with angiosperms in vivo and in vitro that were performed on board of biosatellites, the space shuttle and orbital stations.

Weightlessness does not change the genetically programmed plant developmental framework, that is, physiological responses during ontogenesis show a similar plasticity in spaces as on Earth. The ability of plants to grow and develop in orbital flight allows for studying plant responses to microgravity at different levels of organization and time of development. Various changes in the structural and functional organization of cellular organelles, lipid peroxidation and antioxidant activity, the cell cycle, expression of genes and proteins involved in a wide range of cellular processes, were described in numerous papers and reviews.

Source – plant biology for Space Exploration, ScienceDirect.com