Plant biologist Karl Hasenstein on growing radishes in space: GotG13

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Karl Hasenstein, the Principal Investigator for the Plant Habitat-02 experiment, which is currently growing radishes on the International Space Station.

At this very moment, there are radishes growing on the International Space Station! They are growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), and in this week’s show we go behind-the-scenes with the Principal Investigator of the Plant Habitat-02 experiment, Dr Karl Hasenstein.

Karl mentions some of his previous work, which used High Gradient Magnetic Fields to study how plants respond to gravity. To find out more, take a look at these two published papers:

Kuznetsov, O.A., Hasenstein, K.H. Intracellular magnetophoresis of amyloplasts and induction of root curvature. Planta 198, 87–94 (1996). DOI:10.1007/BF00197590. Hasenstein, Karl H., et al. Analysis of magnetic gradients to study gravitropism. American journal of botany 100.1 (2013): 249-255. [Discover more of Karl’s publications.]

There’s also a NASA Science page from 2002: Sowing Seeds in a Magnetic Field.

Karl also mentions Proprioception, amyloplasts, hybrid tomato-potatoes, and his post doc Susan John.

A post shared by International Space Station (@iss)

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