Glenlivet hopes space barley will make out-of-this-world whisky

…a team of researchers led by Dr Mike Dixon, director of the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF) at the University of Guelph, sent several thousand barley seeds to the International Space Station (ISS). 

Scotch whisky business Chivas Brothers Ltd (Glenlivet is one of their whisky brands) donated proprietary barley seed for the experiment.

Some of the seeds just chilled out on the ISS, but the rest were put into a compartment on a platform outside the space station. It’s called the MISSE Science Carrier, where MISSE stands for Materials International Space Station Experiment. Outside the station, the barley seeds were exposed to microgravity, cosmic radiation and 200-degree swings in temperature as the ISS moved between the intense glare of the Sun and the cool of Earth’s shadow.

The University of Guelph has plenty of experience with sending seeds into space. They developed the Tomatosphere project, which sends batches of tomato seeds to the ISS and then brings them home for kids in Canada and the US to grow in their science classes.

“This experiment represents the extreme conditions that plant-based biologicals such as seeds would be subjected to if we create self-sustaining life support systems in space. Knowing how food sources will fare in such harsh environments is a small but significant incremental step in the long scientific investigation to supporting human life in space.

It would be astonishing if the barley seeds placed on the MISSE Space Carrier MSC platform germinate, but then the tomato seeds surprised many of us, too. We look forward to seeing how they do. In any case, we have the insurance of the larger volume of barley seed inside the ISS that will be the source of ongoing phases of the