Dublin Farmer and the Tubers for Mars

Andrew Douglas, shown with Jayden Whelan, left, and Malena Behan, hopes his potatoes will feed explorers like in The Martian. Photo by Andres Poveda.

Andrew Douglas, a horticulturist who set up Dublin’s first rooftop farm, plans to supply potato pods to a Nasa mission on the slopes of a Hawaiian volcano, where the space agency is simulating life on Mars.

By Gabrielle Monaghan
The Sunday Times Ireland
January 15 2017
(Must see. Mike)

Excerpt:

A version of the Irish potato will boldly go where no spud has gone before — to a Mars simulation habitat run by Nasa.

Andrew Douglas, a horticulturist who set up Dublin’s first rooftop farm, plans to supply potato pods to a Nasa mission on the slopes of a Hawaiian volcano, where the space agency is simulating life on Mars. Nasa is hoping to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

In 2013, Douglas set up a kitchen garden on the roof of the Chocolate Factory building in Dublin before moving it to the top-floor science lab at Belvedere­ College. There are now 180 varieties of heritage and heirloom potatoes growing in upcycled water cooler bottles and artificial grass offcuts on the college’s rooftop. “Who better to help experiment with growing spuds on Mars than an Irishman?” said Douglas.

He was invited to submit samples of the pods for use in an experiment by Carmel Johnston, a soil scientist at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (Hi-Seas) habitat. Johnston was one of six researchers who lived for 12 months in a solar-powered, 1,000 sq ft dome on the north face of Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii.

That spot, about 8,200ft above sea level, was chosen as its jagged lava fields and extreme temperatures are the closest to a Mars habitat on Earth. The crew had to wear spacesuits when they ventured out, and received food supplies only every two months.

Johnston, who said the research team had yet to decide if it would use the Irish potato pods, ended her year-long stay in the dome in August.

On Thursday, another six crew members will enter the dome for eight months. The mission is designed to help Nasa researchers study the challenges astronauts might face during a real Mars mission, including growing food.

“Under the watchful eye of the research team and supported by experienced mission control, the crew will participate in eight primary and three opportunistic research studies,” said principal investigator Kim Binsted in a statement. “The Nasa-funded primary research will be conducted by scientists from across the US and Europe.”

Thank Potato, an offshoot of Douglas’s Urban Farm project, will be sending six pods to test one potato variety, “with varying degrees of substrate mixes” to evaluate different conditions. “The best outcome of this project would be the ability to evaluate which substrate mixes produce the most tubers,” said Douglas.

He will have to use a US seed variety rather than an Irish one due to US agricultural rules.

Douglas learnt the Hi-Seas scheme was looking for potato pods at last year’s Electric Picnic festival, where he met Jeff Pernell of Galactic Farms in Montana. The American urban farm had supplied aquaponics, which typically use fish and their waste to fertilise plants grown in water rather than soil, for the Hi-Seas mission.

Johnson and her crew were able to use the Galactic Farm system to grow small amounts of peas and chard at the dome.

The team is studying the physiological and psychological effects of isolation on a small group of settlers. Astronauts who travel to Mars would be isolated with colleagues for up to three years, with only limited, delayed and digital contact with other humans.

In a blog post, Johnston said: “The research we are conducting will hopefully have implications for food production on Mars as well as Earth. How do we feed a population using the resources you have while not destroying the planet you’re on?”

In the film The Martian, Matt Damon’s character, who is stranded on the planet with dwindling food supplies, figures out how to grow potatoes on Mars. Douglas said this was not the stuff of science fiction, though his pods would have to be redesigned to suit the growing conditions required by the Hi-Seas mission.

“It has already been proven that plants can be grown using Martian soil,” he said.

Link here.