A startup company in Abu Dhabi plans to send quinoa seeds into space.. Why?

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - The climate crisis has greatly affected the cultivation of many food crops, causing some scientists and entrepreneurs to look for solutions outside our planet. Abu Dhabi startup StarLab Oasis, an extension of a Texas company called Nanoracks, wants to grow seeds in outer space in order to develop plant species that can survive on unsuitable land.

StarLab Oasis expects to send its first batch of seeds into space in 2023. Seeds, such as soybeans and quinoa, grow differently in space.

Without Earth's gravity, plants struggle to determine their growth path, and they are also exposed to cosmic radiation. This can lead to seed mutation and the production of many new, more tolerant and productive plant species, such as drought-resistant crops that can grow in saline conditions.

StarLab Oasis co-founder Allen Herbert told Ofoq News that sending seeds into space will contribute to "sustainability, climate change, and food security on Earth." Herbert added: “Space is a place with limited resources, energy and space.

“It's an ideal place to conduct research, and the same technology can be brought to Earth.” Plants have been subjected to “mutation breeding,” that is, exposing species to chemicals or radiation, on Earth since the 1920s, explained StarLab Oasis botanist Connor Kiselchuk, and it began to be applied in outer space during the 1960s.

China has sent seeds into space since the 1980s, which has led its farmers to use new types of crops. In 2022, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations sent seeds into space for the first time to develop crops so they can withstand climate change.

Herbert said that StarLab Oasis will be one of the first to commercialize this process. The company plans to work with other companies, space agencies, universities, and non-profit organizations to send seeds into space either for research or commercial purposes.

It is up to customers to choose whether to propagate plants for trade and sale. One of the non-profit institutions that the company is currently working with is the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai, and it is looking to increase the tolerance of crops such as quinoa to salinity and drought, according to what Kiselchuk explained.

Providing food for the journey to Mars Initially, StarLab Oasis will send seeds to the International Space Station (ISS) where astronauts will plant them, but its long-term goal is to send them to a commercial space station called Starlab, which is scheduled to be operational in 2027. Upon returning to Earth, the seeds will be planted either by a customer, or in the StarLab Oasis laboratory, where they will be tested to monitor how they grow in environments Certain conditions that experience drought or extreme heat, for example.

StarLab Oasis, which was founded in 2021, currently has 5 employees, and is scheduled to expand next year. The company is supported by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) in the United Arab Emirates as part of a $41 million program to increase food production in arid environments.

The country may benefit from the project, as it currently imports up to 90% of its food. Speaking about StarLab Oasis, the Acting Director General of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, Abdullah Abdulaziz Al Shamsi, said that it is “a very ambitious and exciting project that will provide access to the scientific potential of space in the field of developing agricultural technologies for a world with limited resources.”

The ambitions of this startup do not end here, as it hopes to develop food production in space, and design systems outside Earth that can produce food on board longer-term space missions, such as those heading to the moon or Mars. According to Kiselchuk, the plants can provide other benefits as well, such as “generating oxygen, filtering some sewage streams, as well as psychological benefits for the crew who will be far from home.”