hello thank you for checking out my
lightning talk
i'm rachel tucker an undergraduate
student at the university of florida
and i've been studying martian regolith
as a substrate for foreign planetary
horticulture
why do regular studies matter human
space exploration is increasing in
duration and distance
which poses a greater need for in-situ
resource utilization in order to
maximize available resources
a regolith simulant offers a comparable
substrate in order to study the
potential of martian regolith as a local
resource for crop production on mars
why do we want to look at mars global
simulant 1.
other martian simulants are available
such as jsc mars 1
and mojave mars simulink both are
sourced from natural environments and
have been widely studied in literature
mars global simulant 1 is a recipe
created by excellence labs
to mimic the mineral chemical volatile
and spectral properties of the rockness
regolith at gale crater which is the
best characterized regolith to date
in our experiment we wanted to determine
what
low concentrations of the mars global
stimulant
how that could affect crops and so we
tested
three different concentrations of
regolith relative
to an inert arcellite substrate base
we tested 10 25 and and 50 percent
mars global stimulant one relative to
the arcellite
during growth we we collected daily
collected data daily for
radical emergence cotyledon emergence
first true leaves budding
and at 10 days after planting we
harvested and collected fresh weight
dry weight height and widest diameter
we planted 25 seeds for each of the
following cultivars
daikon radish amara mustard extra dwarf
bok choy
buckwheat red russian kale and
outrageous red romaine
pictured here is a top view of 3
5 7 and 10 days after planting of the
control group in the top row
10 25 and the 50 concentration of mars
global stimulant
as you can see as the concentration of
mars global stimulant increases the
amount of vegetative tissue decreases
picture here is a graph for each of the
cultivars and the x-axis is the number
of days after planting
and in the y-axis is the percent of
seeds planted
as you can see here for radical
emergence there was a large difference
in each of the six cultivars between the
tony 25
concentration of regolith and the 50
concentration
for cotyledon emergence in five of the
six
cultivars with an exception of
outrageous red romaine there was a large
difference between the
10 and the 25 percent concentration of
regolith
and again for the first true leaves
budding for five of the six cultivars
the exception of the outrageous red
romaine there's a large difference
between
the 25 and the 10 concentrations of the
regolith
at harvest there was not enough
vegetative tissue in order to collect
data for
the 50 concentration of regolith however
for the 20 fresh weight for the 25
concentration of regolith relative
to the control group each of the six
cultivars
was statistically significant in
freshwater
for dry weight five of the six cultivars
were statistically significant between
the twenty-five percent concentration of
burglars and the test
in the control group
for the height for the harvest data it
was very statistically significant in
terms of the 25 percent
concentration of regolith in which all
six cultivars were statistically
significant
and in 10 concentration of regolith five
of the six cultivars were statistically
significant
and as you can see pictured here the
extra prok choi at zero percent
um or the control group and the 10
concentration there is a wide difference
diameter was also greatly affected in
for
all six cultivars the 25 percent
concentration of regolith was
statistically significant from the
control group
what does this mean unamended mars
global stimulant 1
severely inhibits vegetative crop growth
in multiple cultivars
and not just at 100 concentration this
occurs at low concentrations as well
and what this means is that this this
regolith will need to be altered in some
way in order to become a viable
resource for crop growth on mars
of course this was not done as one
person
science takes a lot of people and a lot
of wonderful people contributed to this
product
project thank you so much for listening
i hope you enjoy the project