Cotton Research Conducted Aboard ISS
Cotton Research Conducted Aboard ISS
Searching for Genetic Clues that Could Result in Greater Resiliency
Cotton is one of the world's most vital agricultural commodities, used in products from clothes to coffee filters. It's also a resource-draining plant that farmers struggle to grow sustainably. The search for genetic clues that could produce resilient cotton plants that use resources more efficiently yielded new results when a research team utilized the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory to study cotton's response to microgravity and stress.
“If we can understand a little bit more about how cotton can grow in places that are weird and different and challenging, like the space station, it could help us make crops more sustainable and grow better under environmental stress.”
Sarah Swanson, UW
The latest issue of Upward, official magazine of the ISS National Lab, explores an investigation by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) that compared how ordinary cotton and cotton genetically modified to withstand drought grew in space. Plants typically struggle to thrive in harsh space environments. To the team's surprise, the test cotton, especially the genetically modified variety, grew better in space than on Earth. Determining exactly why cotton seems to thrive in space is a mystery that UW researchers are investigating.
Decoding these findings could lead to the production of more resilient crops that withstand stressful conditions on Earth and during long-term space missions.
“If we can understand a little bit more about how cotton can grow in places that are weird and different and challenging, like the space station, it could help us make crops more sustainable and grow better under environmental stress,” said Sarah Swanson, director of the Newcomb Imaging Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) in the article.
The cotton plants were launched to ISS is 2021 as part of a SpaceX Commercial Resupply mission. The ISS National Laboratory-sponsored project called Targeting Improved Cotton Through Orbital Cultivation (TIC-TOC) was funded by the Target Corporation to investigate cotton root growth in microgravity.