The ability to grow safe, fresh food as a dietary supplement for astronauts in space is an important goal for NASA. Food crops such as leafy greens grown in space experience different environmental…

This is a $29,439.93 grant awarded by NASA to Amentum Services, Inc. to study the microbiomes of leafy green vegetable crops grown during spaceflight on the International Space Station. The research aims to expand knowledge of how microbial organisms and communities associated with the Veggie plant growth system acclimate to and change over time in the spaceflight environment. This includes analyzing interactions between the plant microbiomes and the broader spacecraft environment, including crew members, air, water, and surfaces. The goal is to provide insights into maintaining healthy, nutritious vegetable crops as a dietary supplement for astronauts. There is no set-aside designation for this grant award, and it represents Amentum Services, Inc.'s sole prime federal grant from NASA to date, though the company holds numerous federal prime contracts and indefinite delivery vehicles across the U.S. government, particularly in the defense, security, and intelligence sectors.

The ability to grow safe, fresh food as a dietary supplement for astronauts in space is an important goal for NASA. Food crops such as leafy greens grown in space experience different environmental conditions than plants grown on earth (i.e. reduced gravity, elevated radiation levels, CO2 levels, etc). These conditions also may have a profound effect on the microbial communities that are an integral part of the plants microbiomes. Plants and their microbiomes may also have an effect on their surrounding environment. Veggie is open to the ISS atmosphere so interactions and exchanges of microbes from the ISS and the crew to the plants and the converse is probable. An in-depth genetic analysis of archived samples and bacterial and fungal isolates would provide the information necessary to correlate the veggie microbial communities to other ISS sources (air, surfaces, crew members, and water) that are currently being studied in part by the microbial tracking investigations at JPL and microbial monitoring activities at JSC. The goals of this study is to expand our knowledge of how microbiological organisms and/or communities associated with veggie plants acclimate to and change over time in the spaceflight environment. This study will also contribute to the evaluation of the benefits for potential manipulation and control in the ISS or other closed environments. An additional goal would be to characterize spaceflight s effects on microbial community dynamics by investigating the mixed community of representative microbes found on station and in veggie to study how they may compete with one another, and thrive in air, water, on surfaces and in media. This study provides a means to investigate the biology of established communities that are found on spacecraft and their interactions as defined in sub-topic MB-a. These tasks will be completed using existing nucleotides, DNA, isolated from veggie crops previously grown on ISS and ground controls to include but not limited to VEG01 (a-c) through VEG03 (a-f). DNA will be labeled for metagenomics and/or whole genome sequencing. Shotgun metagenomics, the untargeted sequencing of all microbial genomes present in a sample provides information on the structure and function of a microbial community. Shotgun sequencing can be used to profile the taxonomic composition and functional potential of microbial communities and to recover whole genome sequences. The benefits provided by substrate and seed microbial communities are important for the sustainability of the substrate and for the health of the plants themselves. Microbes in both the rhizosphere and in the phyllosphere have been found to contribute to nutrient cycling and nutrient flow as well as carbon sequestration, protection and defense from plant pathogens and general plant health and growth. Identifying and understanding the microbiome of the crop seeds and plants during developmental stages will provide necessary information to maintain a healthy, nutritious vegetable source. Data from this study may also show the relationship between the environmental microbial community and the veggie plant communities.