Now NASA Wants To Grow Potatoes On Mars For Real (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: In the hit movie, "The Martian", NASA astronaut Mark Watney survives by planting potatoes in one of the modules of the Mars base who is stranded at. The plot device received a great deal of praise from space agriculture experts, according to a recent story in Popular Mechanics. Of course, future space farmers would be advised to grow a variety of crops in order to diversify their diet, not an option for Watney. In any case, according to a story in ZME Science, NASA is partnering with Peru's International Potato Center (CIP) to do what Watney did and grow potatoes on Mars.

Comments

Potatoes and Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Potatoes and Tomatoes might be a really good idea for space/mars...I didn't see the movie, so forgive if its obvious already...

They can be continuously harvested for some time. When we do it on earth, we generally are lazy and don't use them to their potential; we plant wait until fruit appears and harvest.. What's special about growing in confined controllable space is, they can be grown vertically in a box, and continuously produce new edible parts...
Example, Potato:
You start with a box full of dirt say 6-12" deep/walls... Plant potato after the plant gets a good start, add 6" to the box, and put more dirt against the stock.. Keep doing this as time goes by... You can eventually harvest the potatos from the bottom run, as new potatoes grow closer to surface... I'm not sure how long this can go for(potentially a lot time) but you can get multiple crops from a single plant(This is what you'd want to genetically modify if necessary, simply direct it to stay alive/keep producing)..

Tomatos are grown in massive greenhouses today and they can survive years.. They simply keep folding/rolling up the tomato vine slowly through the months in a controlled environment.. New Tomatoes flower at the top of the vine, ripe harvested from bottom.

More importantly still might be those special edibles that grow like a weed and ALL parts are edible/nutritious(Unlike potatos and tomatos) edible roots, stems, leaf, fruit...

http://old.seattletimes.com/AB...

What you want and what you get are different

[burtosis]

While I'm sure NASA wants to grow potatoes on Mars, they are simply settling for growing them in carefully simulated soils. There are lots of technical challenges and it's interesting science. However, the title is somewhat misleading as there are no actual plans to grow them on Mars.

Re:Why potatoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero is pretty limited, yes. Also, there will never be a Martian colony. Ever. Put that fantasy to rest.

Re:Right

[pushing-robot]

You wouldn't grow plants in the open, not just due to (the lack of) atmospheric pressure but because you'd lose valuable water invested in them.

For the foreseeable future, any farms on Mars would be grown indoors in a densely stacked hydroponics or aeroponics environment.

Martian soil is likely to very salty and toxic.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The soil on Earth has been washed by rain for millions of years and almost all the water soluble salts have been dissolved and transported to the ocean by the rivers. Without the rain cycle the martian soil is likely to contain very heavy doses of heavy and toxic metals, lots of salts. The martian Whatney would have died of heavy metal poisoning if he was eating the potatoes without poetic license and fiction reality adjustment. Just saying.

Re:Why potatoes?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

So I looked it up.

White potatoes have many (but not quite all) of the major nutrients. But you'd have to eat a LOT of them if that's all you ate.

White and sweet are very close on most things, with a few major exceptions: White is a bit higher in protein. Sweet has about an order of magnitude more sodium (which white is very low in). Sweet also has a bunch more sugar. And sweet is LOADED with vitamin A and Beta-carotene - which is great for a serving but terribly toxic if you get too much - as you would if you tried to live off just sweet potatoes.

So, no, sweet potatoes are NOT more nutritious than white (except if you need some vitamin A and are only eating sweet potatoes as PART of a balanced diet.)