The preliminary results of an experiment confirm what the 2015 Hollywood science fiction film \u201cThe Martian\u201d showed: potatoes can grow on Mars.<\/p>\n
The International Potato Centre (CIP) in Lima, Peru, launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth.<\/p>\n
The new phase of CIP\u2019s experiment to grow potatoes in simulated Martian conditions began on February 14 last year.<\/p>\n
Based upon designs and advice provided by the NASA\u2019s Ames Research Centre in California, a tuber was planted in a specially constructed CubeSat contained environment built by engineers from the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the crops can tolerate the extreme conditions that we are exposing them to in our CubeSat, they have a good chance to grow on Mars. We will do several rounds of experiments to find out which potato varieties do best,\u201d said Julio Valdivia-Silva from UTEC.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to know what the minimum conditions are that a potato needs to survive,\u201d he said in a statement released by CIP.<\/p>\n
The CubeSat houses a container holding soil and the tuber. Inside this hermetically sealed environment, the CubeSat delivers nutrient-rich water, controls the temperature for Mars day and night conditions, and mimics Mars air pressure, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.<\/p>\n
Live streaming cameras recording the soil showed potato sprouting in the simulated Martian conditions.<\/p>\n
The results so far have been positive, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
IANS<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The preliminary results of an experiment confirm what the 2015 Hollywood science fiction film \u201cThe Martian\u201d showed: potatoes can grow on Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3337,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3335\/revisions\/3337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}