New Delhi: One of the seven experiments designed by Indian researchers that Shubhanshu Shukla carried out on the International Space Station (ISS) was investigating the impact of spaceflight on six varieties of crop seeds. Once Shukla returns to the Earth with a splashdown, the seeds will be transported back to India and grown over multiple generations, with the plants demonstrating preferred traits being selected for genetic analysis. The goal of the experiment is to better understand how food crops can be grown in space for future human exploration missions. The experiment is being conducted by the Department of Space of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), in association with the College of Agriculture, Vellayani, Kerala Agricultural University.
The experiment called, Crop Seeds on ISS, involve a variety of food crop seeds integrated into a biology payload within the lab of IIST. These were transported onto the ISS within the brand new Crew Dragon used for the Axiom 4 mission, along with ISRO Gaganyatri Shubhanshu Shukla. For conducting the experiment, IIST signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Human Spaceflight Centre (HSFC), a brand new facility to support the operations of India’s ambitious Gaganyaan programme to lift humans to Earth orbit using domestic hardware. The HSFC is located next to the ISRO HQ in Bengaluru.
Post-flight field studies
The College of Agriculture at Vellayani in Kerala will provide the support of the post-flight seed studies. The biology payload consists of seeds of self-pollinating crops, including cereals, pulses, vegetables and oil seeds released by the Kerala Agricultural University. The hardware integration occurred at the Space Biology lab, and was supported by experts from the European Space Agency (ESA). The payload was subsequently shipped by the IIST to the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) for the flight up to the orbital complex. The principle investigator of the experiment is KG Sreejalaxmi, who travelled to KSC for final inspection of the payload before it was handed over to the Axiom team. There are ground control samples maintained at the Space Biology Lab. The seeds will be returned to India and grown over multiple generations to evaluate their growth and yield parameters.