2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Study on effects of pseudo-microgravity (PMG) environment to soybean root growth and symbiosis for R/D of space agriculture

Research Project

Project/Area Number	24658061
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Plant nutrition/Soil science
Research Institution	Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Principal Investigator	YOKOYAMA Tadashi 東京農工大学, (連合)農学研究科(研究院), 教授 (70313286)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	UMEDA Norihiro 東京農工大学, 大学院工学研究院, 教授 (60111803)
Project Period (FY)	2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
Keywords	クリノスタット / 宇宙農業 / 根の変異 / 疑似微少重力 / 根伸長計測
Research Abstract	In this project, changes of plant morphology of Soybean under pseudo-microgravity (PMG) environment produced by a 3-D clinostat were compared with ground-grown control samples. As a result, root length, number of lateral root and proliferation activity of root cells for PMG-grown soybean were increased. These observation were close relationship to gene expressions between arf8 and pgp1. Furthermore, the number of root nodule primordium on PMG-grown sample was increased. To develop an in-situ method for measuring root elongation by capacitance detection, two electrodes; one of them is attached to the stem and the other is inserted in to the soil. The capacitance which changes with depth of root elongation was successfully detected in dry soil and wet soil.