Hazardous space radiation might not be such a big deal for the green-thumbed astro-farmer of the future, biologists have discovered, as plants have been found to thrive and adapt to the irradiated soil of the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear site.
The impact of the nuclear meltdown is still being felt in the Ukraine and across Europe, 25 years after the power plant exploded. Birds living near the site have five percent smaller brains, horses and cattle die from thyroid gland damage and the German government is still dealing with useless, irradiated boar meat to this day.
But, surprisingly enough, it hasn't left the site as some post-apocalyptic, desert-like wasteland. Plant life has slowly crept back into the area, and the flora continues to flourish in the highly radioactive soil.
To test the impact of radiation on the plants, researchers from the Slovak Academy of Sciences' Institute of Plant Genetics and Biotechnology planted flax seeds in the irradiated dirt near the meltdown site. The oil-rich flax seed, usually a native to the Mediterranean, is used to make fabric, dye, paper and medicines.
They found that the flax survived in the soil, and only underwent some small, genetically-insignificant changes. In the first generation of flax, barely five percent of the 720 plant proteins they were studying saw a change on account of the radiation.
While the results are promising, the biologists are still puzzled as to why the plants can so easily shrug off the deadly effects of the radiation, when its so hazardous to humans (the accident caused just 57 direct deaths, but thousands of cancer deaths were blamed on the incident for years after). The favoured theory is that plants can "remember" prehistoric Earth conditions, when the fledgling planet was bathed in an air of harmful radiation.
The radioactivity levels in the Chernobyl soil won't necessarily compare with the intensity of the radioactivity found in soil on Mars or the moon, but the early experiments in Chernobyl could help future space colonists define the radiation tolerance among different plants, and help decide what seeds to take into space.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
