PHOTO BY BLYTHE MCKAY

When Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau blasted off into space aboard shuttle mission STS-97 Nov. 30, he was joined in spirit by thousands of budding young scientists across Canada. That's because he was carrying with him 200,000 tomato seeds that will eventually be sprouting in 3,000 classrooms of Grade 3 to 6 students across the country as part of a government/industry/University of Guelph project called Tomatosphere.

  The student "Tomatonauts," as they've been dubbed, will compare the seeds travelling with Garneau on his 12-day mission with tomato plants they'll grow from seeds that stayed on Earth.

  "Food availability and life support are major limiting factors in extended space exploration," says Prof. Mike Dixon, Plant Agriculture, who is leading the project with research associate Vladimir Vasilenko. "Plants will be needed to provide a source of fresh, nutritious food and to produce a vital life-support system. Scientists need to know if space travel affects plant germination and plant growth before these extended missions can take place."

  Dixon leads Guelph's Space and Advanced Life-Support Agriculture (SALSA) research group. The group is looking at the ability of plants to provide food and establish good air quality in controlled environments such as space shuttles.

  For his part, Vasilenko has developed a red-light treatment for the tomato seeds using red and infrared light from part of the natural sunlight spectrum. This stimulates seedling growth and vigour. The researchers want to determine whether the red-light treatment will work on tomato seeds exposed to microgravity and cosmic radiation in space, to help ensure healthy plants for extended space exploration in the future.

  To test the effects of space travel on red-light-treated seeds, half of the 200,000 seeds heading into space and half of the 200,000 seeds remaining on Earth have been treated with red light.

  The groups of students across Canada will receive seeds from each category for their experiments and will use the Earth-based untreated seeds as a control. They will observe the time required for each seed to successfully germinate, the percentage of successful germination in each treatment, the seedling vigour (as determined by height measurements) and similarities in seedling vigour for each treatment.

  Once the data have been compiled, the students will send their results electronically to the tomatosphere Web site (www.tomatosphere.org), where they will be posted so the students can compare their results with those of other classrooms across the country. The U of G researchers will analyse the data and produce a national report.

  "Tomatosphere is a great opportunity for students to learn about the exciting world of science, space exploration, food and nutrition," says Dixon.

  Tomatosphere is sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology, Heinz Canada, the Canadian Space Resource Centre, Ontario Agri-Food Education Inc. and U of G.