Gioia Massa, Gerard Newsham
Plants will be an important component of off-Earth life support systems for food production and atmosphere recycling. The objective of this study was to evaluate various species and media combinations for the Veggie hardware, a small vegetable production unit designed for space flight. The methodology involved growing multiple salad and herb species under Veggie analog conditions using both commercial peat-based media and arcilite, with biometric measurements and microbial loads assessed for each species. The results indicated that while some species demonstrated better growth in specific media, no consistent trends emerged across all species, although lettuce thrived in the mixtures of peat-based and arcilite media, and microbial counts were reduced in plants grown in arcilite. Additionally, biomass production varied by species, with edible biomass ranging from 3.5 to 8 grams dry/m²/day, and partitioning of radish plants' biomass to edible roots increased with arcilite content. Overall, the use of pillows for rooting media provided a simple yet effective method for plant growth in the Veggie environment.
@article{9024fe1c-49e9-4893-b625-35fb74795b41,
title={Preliminary Species and Media Selection},
author={Gioia Massa and Gerard Newsham},
year={2026},
language={en}
}TY - JOUR TI - Preliminary Species and Media Selection AU - Gioia Massa AU - Gerard Newsham PY - 2026 LA - en ER -
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