NASA looks to Tuskegee for space potato project

TUSKEGEE, Ala. -- Space -- the final potato patch.

The mission of Tuskegee University's space foods research center: to produce sweet potatoes that will boldly grow where no sweet potatoes have grown before.

NASA provided a $5 million grant over five years, and the center's scientists went to work, researching how to grow sweet potatoes and peanuts on the moon or Mars.

"We have delivered crop-growing protocols to NASA for both crops," said Desmond Mortley, head of Tuskegee University's Center for Food and Environmental Systems for Human Exploration of Space. "They have used the one for sweet potatoes to grow at Johnson Space Center. It worked, and they are very pleased."

The center's scientific research trek has led to several significant discoveries:

Potatoes and peanuts grown in nutrient-laced water and in various soil substitutes will produce crops similar to those grown in soil.

Potatoes grown in high concentrations of carbon dioxide, similar to conditions that could exist on long space flights, produced more than triple the yield produced in the natural environment.

Tasty and nutritious meals can be produced from unusual substances created from common plants.

A long list of foods

The researchers have developed a long list of tasty foods made from sweet potatoes and peanuts that are intended to perk up any astronaut's mealtime, whether on long journeys in space or on fixed bases on the moon or Mars. These items put the orangey, tangy, food drink of earlier space flights to shame. Consider biscuits, pancakes, waffles, syrup, meatless sausage balls, coffee cake, vegetarian pot pie, sweet potato cheesecake and a peanut-protein meat substitute, all from potatoes or peanuts.

Keeping astronauts healthy and fit will be easier with the Tuskegee-developed diet, because biscuits made from sweet potatoes have higher beta carotene, vitamin C, dietary fiber and iron content than biscuits made from commercially available mixes, researchers found.

Research is continuing on a previously developed orange-pineapple-flavored breakfast drink made primarily from sweet potatoes, which is high in beta carotene, vitamins A and C and fiber but low in sodium.

The drink, which also has rated high in taste tests, has only natural sugars, said Elaine Bromfield, a staff instructor in the project who has been at Tuskegee for more than nine years.

For noon or evening meals, space food researchers have determined that sweet potato leaves can be cooked and served just like spinach or collards. They have similar nutrition value and "taste delicious," said Bromfield. "We try to be as creative as possible," she said.

Working on potato cereal

Montreka Dansby of Birmingham, a second-year graduate student in food and nutrition science and one of the NASA scholars at Tuskegee, helped develop a sweet potato cereal astronauts will eat for breakfast on space ships or colony bases of the future.

"We're really working hard on the 100 percent sweet potato cereal because it's gluten-free. We've gotten a great product," Dansby said.

Daniel Barta, NASA's technical monitor at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said Tuskegee University competes with other universities for the NASA research grants and is expected to continue work on space foods in the years to come.

"The work that they're doing supports a need NASA has to develop enabling technologies to take the next step, to go beyond the space station," Barta said.