What will we eat in space?
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What problem does space travel create for feeding astronauts?
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Hey, duckies, if you have little ears listening along, that's actually fine. Enjoy this one.
If humans are really going to travel beyond the International Space Station, we need to feed them and look after them. And you can't take all the food you need with you. So you really have to grow some of the food. And so if you think about the Martian or even think about the lunar base people are currently designing, it's got space for growing plants. And then the next question is, which plants should you take?
One plant, one mission, to feed the entire population. Oh, and by the way, the population is in space.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.
I'm Dr. Anne Jones and this is What The Duck. Now I love all plants and all nature equally, like any good stepmother. But sometimes even mummy has a secret favourite. And before you judge me, get a load of this resume. It's cute. It's ubiquitous. It's ducky. It's tiny. It's the fastest growing plant. I want to introduce you to my new bestest plant friend, the BPF, Duckweed.
They are the smallest flowering plants on the planet. See, I told you.
That is Professor Jenny Mortimer. She works at Plants for Space in Adelaide. That's an ARC centre of excellence, by the way. And she's also at the ARC Research Hub for Engineering Plants to Replace Fossil Carbon, the ARC Training Centre for Future Crops Development, and she's a professor at Adelaide University. It's like her jobs are multiplying as quickly as duckweed does.
What is duckweed? It's actually a collection of different species of plants.
So there is a whole flock of duckweed species.
And if you've ever walked past a river or a pond or a dam and a few weeks ago it was clean water and then suddenly it's gone really green on the surface, a lot of people say, ah, it's an algal bloom, it's something like that. If you look a bit closer and you can see individual fronds with your naked eye, it's almost certainly
duckweed. My new best frond was there the whole time waiting for me and I had no idea. What is going on
there? We use the word frond as opposed to a leaf. If you look at a water lily and it has those big flat surfaces, imagine that, but really tiny. So the smallest ones are like half a millimetre across.
Why is duckweed considered the ideal super‑food for space habitats?
The largest ones, the giant duckweed, is five millimetres. Wait!
LAUGHTER
The giant duckling is five millimetres across.
Yeah, it's beefy. That is adorable. And it's completely harmless. In fact, it's really edible and humans can eat it.
And you can eat it. See, I know it's wrong, but I can't help it. I
love this plant. It has lots of different versions where some of it has separate leaves and roots. Some of it doesn't even have leaves and roots anymore. No leaves, no roots. What the duck? So it's a really interesting plant to look at. And these are aquatic plants.
Was that aquatic?
So they're plants that were on land that have returned to the water.
So like all life on Earth, they came from the water and then they moved to land. But then these duckies got back into the water again. But this time, some of them took their bathers off. And in this case, the bathers are the roots and the leaves. These ones,
they're called wolfia, and one example is wolfia australiana. Clue, you can find it all over Australia, where it looks like a little green iceberg, essentially. So, yeah, it doesn't have roots, it doesn't have leaves. It just floats in the water and it has a top surface and a bottom surface, but that's about it. Talk about taking
minimalism a bit too seriously. The roots and leaves decluttered because we've just got to that time where we just need to downsize and spend time by the water, you know? Wolfia australiana is tiny. The pictures on the internet have it on a human finger and each little plant fits within the lines of the fingerprint.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What problem does space travel create for feeding astronauts?
0:00–3:18
2
Why is duckweed considered the ideal super‑food for space habitats?
3:18–6:10
3
How does duckweed’s tiny size and rapid growth give it a unique advantage?
6:10–9:30
4
What are the weird facts about duckweed’s flowers and reproduction?
9:30–12:41
5
Why is duckweed’s protein (Rubisco) touted as a near‑perfect human protein?
12:41–15:49
6
How have scientists tested duckweed in microgravity and hyper‑gravity?
15:49–19:42
7
What are the plans for growing duckweed on the Moon and beyond?
19:42–22:52
8
What challenges remain for using duckweed as food and material in space?
22:52–25:41