Fairchild's got a fascinating program with NASA

This year, I attended the Chocolate Festival at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden for the first time. I loved sampling lots of chocolate, walking through the beautiful gardens, watching a crocodile catching a suntan and browsing all the vendor booths.

What caught my attention the most though, was when I approached the butterfly garden and walked by several young students. One of them in particular, from Richmond Heights High School who was standing next to a sign for NASA.

That's when I learned about their BioTECH High School and their program with NASA. The freshman student told me all about Growing Beyond Earth, the partnership program with NASA where they're researching edible plants.

The GBE program "was designed to expand food options and increase plant diversity for spaceflight by evaluating multiple edible plants that meet NASA's criteria for size and edibility," says Fairchild's website.

Photo courtesy of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden website

It goes on to explain that "using equipment that mimics the environmental conditions aboard the International Space Station, students are testing factors that may influence plant growth, flavor and nutrition."

The schools are equipped with mini botany labs that consist of a specially designed growth chamber, LED lighting, capillary watering system, pots, soil, fertilizers and seeds. Scientists at Fairchild and NASA designed the labs, following scientific research protocols which has led to scientists at Kennedy Space Center using their classroom data to select plants for evaluation in space. You can see one of the labs right at Fairchild.

Photo courtesy of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden website

If you ever saw the feature film "The Martian" starring Matt Damon, perhaps by now you're envisioning scenes from that film, much like I did when I heard about this program. I also thought "so cool!"

You can read much more about their success stories on candidate plants that can be grown onboard spacecraft at this link https://www.fairchildgarden.org/science-conservation-/growing-beyond-earthnasa-and-fairchild

For weeks after attending the festival I wanted to write about this as a way to encourage you to visit Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. When you do, look beyond the gorgeous foliage and into some of their amazing programs like this one with NASA, and many others.