Recent Development on Automatic Growing and Harvest System with Self-Propagation and Perpetual Plant Growth 2002-01-2481

An efficient Food Production (FP) system is needed for long space exploratory missions. Conventional approaches to starting crops from seeds are very inefficient. These approaches require seeds, growth medium, an automatic seeder, growth chamber for seedlings, transplanter, production growth chamber and control system specifically designed for all these systems. Present technology cannot offer complete needs specific to extraterrestrial applications. By selecting ideal crops for their nutritional values and propagation methods, unnecessary mass, weight, energy and labor associated to perform all the aforementioned tasks can be mostly eliminated while gaining a great benefit which makes the food production system very efficient. An existing Automatic Growing and Harvest System (AGHS) has been drastically modified to make it simpler and more efficient by eliminating the previously designed trimming and harvest system and improving software controls of the existing main stem retraction system. Furthermore, the same concept can be applied to other crops to achieve balanced nutritional values and higher efficiency in Air Revitalization (AR) and Water Purification (WP) functions.