Crops

RobertDyck · 2024-12-07 15:51:10

From 01-Jan-2014: Post #72

RobertDyck wrote:

Summary, for 12 people: (my work, greenhouse area)
Coffee 298 m^2
Soybean 475 m^2
Wheat 600 m^2
Potato 145 m^2
Rice 157.5 m^2
Corn 120.5 m^2
Black Pepper 3.5 m^2
Barley 13.5 m^2
Sugar Beet 13 m^2
Fenugreek 0.378 m^2
Vanilla 3 m^2
Grapes 12 m^2
Orange/Lemon 6 m^2
Apple/Pear 6 m^2
Plum 6 m^2
Note: you can graft any citrus to any other citrus, any stone fruit to stone fruit, and any apple to apple. I include one orange tree with a single branch of lemon. There is one exception to this rule: you can graft an "interstem" of a variety of apple called Winter Banana to an apple tree; then graft pear to Winter Banana.
Also assume a device with in-vitro chloroplasts: recycle CO2 + H2O -> O2 + starch. This device will require a nursery to grow peas: at 2 weeks, leaves harvested for chloroplasts. You will have to grow some pea plants to maturity for seads.
chemicals: Salt, ammonia processed with CO2 to become baking soda. Grapes processed to form tartaric acid. Baking soda + tartaric acid + starch -> baking powder. Ammonium nitrate as nitrogen fertilizer for soil.
Other crops not sized yet:
Oats
Onion
Beet
Garlic
Parsley
Sesame
Pea
Green beans
Black beans
Carrot
Cassava (tapioca)
Flax (source of omega-3, important for meatless diet)
Guar (a bean)
Irish moss (carrageenan) - sea weed, grows in a water tank
Marmite:
Also necessary for a meatless diet: vitamin B12. A variety of cyanobacteria called Spirolina has it, but some bacteria also produce B12. Streptomyces griseus is a bacterium once thought to be a yeast, and can be grown with yeast to add B12. One article claims Propionibacterium shermanii and Pseudomonas denitrificans have now replaced S. griseus. In either case, the UK variety of Marmite is fortified with B12 from a bacterium.

This is a total of 1,859.378 m² for 12 people, or 154.95 m² per person. That doesn't include the additional crops for which area is not worked out. Basis was to calculate per capita consumption of each crop, then how much area a farm field requires to grow that much on Earth. Nothing extreme.

If you want to produce "artificial flour" with starch from in vitro chloroplasts and protein from a microbe, then we don't require most of the wheat. Area for sugar cane is already reduced. Sugar cane to produce molasses, white sugar produced from in vitro chloroplasts. This chart includes sugar beet because they grow in cold climate such as Canada or North Dakota. However, molasses from sugar beet is, um, not tasty, so we would need sugar cane for that.

SpaceNut · 2025-12-16 18:29:23

Red Sauce for the Red Planet

However, the team found that the main experiment yielded fewer fruits than expected. Palmer says that this is due to the challenges of getting the light, temperature and irrigation just right in larger growing spaces.

Calliban · Yesterday 16:25:28

Duckweed!
https://youtu.be/U_405zhZkbY

This is a small, floating family of plants that is regularly eaten in eastern countries but is considered to be pond scum in the west. By my calculations, 1kg of wet yield contains 430 calories. Average productivity is around 20kg/m2/year. So an 84m2 pond would produce enough calories to feed 1 person indefinitely. More interesting is that some species are about 40% protein by weight, making this 10x more productive than the equivelent area of soybeans. What is more, duckweed contains all nine essential amino acids. This means you can build muscle by eating duckweed without supplementing it with anything else. It is also a vegetable source of vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acid. Some varieties are high in starch, allowing dried and powdered duckweed to be blended with wheat flour to make bread. This is more nutritious and healthy than standard bread.

These floating plants are about the size of sand grains. We could pump floating duckweed through transparent pipes on the Martian surface. Martian CO2 could be injected into the water and the plants would convert it into biomass. The water can be warmed using nuclear waste heat. This allows the wasteheat radiators of Martian nuclear reactors to serve as an abundant food source. To feed a city of 1million people would need an area of some 84km2. That is a square about 9km (5.5 miles) aside. This is more compact than most cities with a population of 1million. Presumably, water with dissolved acetate salts would grow duckweed without sunlight. In this case, our food production could take place in a compact facility using nuclear power. But as nuclear reactors need waste heat radiators anyway, why not use them to grow duckweed in sunlight and then use the electric power for other purposes?

Human waste can be recycled very efficiently in this arrangement. Waste would first enter an añaerobic digester, producing methane as a fuel. When fully digested, the waste breaks down into water with dissolved nutrients and an organic sludge which seperates by gravity. The water can be pumped back into the duckweed farm. The organic sludge would be added to martian regolith and used to make soil. Nothing gets wasted in this arrangement.

Duckweed is a photosynthetic plant. It is therefore a potential source of chloroplasts, which Robert has discussed as a means to produce oxygen and glucose in compact volumes. The glucose can be added to foods to boost calorie content. It can also be fermented into alcohol. This will have uses as a fuel, a low temperature working fluid, a screenwash for vehicles, solar panels and greenhouses and for human consumption. Over time, we may find ways of using alcohol, yeasts and algae to make rum and whisky that we can export to Earth. This was my original hacienda idea.

Last edited by Calliban (Yesterday 16:38:30)

SpaceNut · Yesterday 17:55:30

Its not the first time I have heard of Duckweed but much like algae that can be eaten people have gotten those early days of life out of the normal menu of choices.

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#676 2024-12-07 15:51:10

Re: Crops

#677 2025-12-16 18:29:23

Re: Crops

#678 Yesterday 16:25:28

Re: Crops

#679 Yesterday 17:55:30

Re: Crops

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