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Antarctic Greenhouse Yields First Crop
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Scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station III, in Antarctica, have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without soil, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets. They picked about eight pounds of salad greens, 18 cucumbers and 70 radishes grown inside a high-tech greenhouse as outside temperatures dropped to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA has successfully grown greens on the International Space Station, but the Antarctic project aims to produce a wider range of vegetables that might one day be grown on the moon or on Mars.
This article appears in the December 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.
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