Cassava for space diet - African contribution to space exploration -

Abstract

Space agriculture is an advanced concept to support life on extraterrestrial outpost. It drives materials recycle loop by biological and ecological functions and creates pleasant life environment on a distant planet. Choice of space diet is one of primary decision required for designing space agriculture. We shall consider diverse food culture as well. We propose cassava, Manihot esculentaand, for one major composition of space food materials. Cassava is a major crop in Africa. It can grow under severe environment. Once farming condition is optimized, the crop yield efficiency is the best among rice, wheat, potato, and sweet potato, in terms of required area to harvest biomass energy from limited area of planting. Propagation made by stem cutting is another advantage of cassava in space agriculture avoiding entomophilous or anemophilous process to pollinate. Cassava for space agriculture would be a good example of promoting mission planning under cooperation between advanced manned space nations and less-space faring countries. It might enforce robustness of the life support capability based on the diversity of agricultural system. More importantly, dream of flying space could be shared by people, regardless of their present commitment to space.