You may have had wine from Tuscany, Champagne or the Texas Hill Country — but what about space?
Researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife are preparing to launch Texas wine grape seeds into space.
Unlike how it sounds, they’re not blowing grapes through straws in the sky. These plants are taking a ride on the Texas A&M/Aegis Aerospace Multi-Use Space Platform Integrating Research and Innovative Technology research mission. That’s TAMU-SPIRIT-1 for short.
TAMU-SPIRIT-1 is an orbital research platform that will be flown aboard the International Space Station. It’s like a satellite campus 250 miles above our heads.
The project started as a senior capstone proposal by two engineering students, Arvid Subramanyam and Coby Arnold. They approached Justin Scheiner, an associate professor at A&M and AgriLife extension viticulture specialist, who looped in Andrej Svyantek, an assistant professor and researcher in the Department of Horticultural Sciences.
The grape seeds will fly around the Earth for six months before returning to be planted and studied.
“There’s a lot of different questions that can be answered and asked by this,” Svyantek said.
Among these questions is what will happen to the seeds when exposed to cosmic radiation. Svyantek said that when we’re looking ahead to more long-term human occupation in space, having a firm grasp on which crops will thrive, and how, will be of the essence.
Part of why grapes specifically were chosen is because of how important they are to culture.
“Grapes are one of the most important and vital to our memories and histories and things that we love, whether it’s fresh fruit or fermented products,” he said. When it comes time for humans to pick which plants come with them to the stars, Svyantek believes grapes will be a likely candidate.
Three varieties of grape are on the mission, one of which is the lomanto.
The lomanto is a Texas cultivar bred by horticulturist Thomas Volney Munson from 1876 through 1913. They’re common around their hometown of Denison and produce large clusters with a deep purple fruit that weigh in around one-third of a pound.
“From the edge of the Red River, [Munson] pioneered hybridization among crops,” Svyantek said.
Munson created the plant in part with Texas’ native grapevines. The result was a vine resistant to Pierce’s disease, rot and mildew.
“The success of the grapevines that he suggested led to him being credited with the survival of the European grape and wine industry,” Svyantek said.
Over in Europe, an outbreak of a plant louse took out over 6 million acres of vineyard. Munson sent some louse-resistant rootstock he developed over to France, where it was bred with the suffering European varieties. In 1888, Munson received the Chevalier du Mérite Agricole (Knight of the Order of Agricultural Merit) from the French government for his work.
Since then, Svyantek said, Texas has become an “innovation hub” for grapevine breeding.
“Texas is no stranger to grapevines,” he said. “As a state we already rank fifth in the nation for acreage planted.”
Now these Texas grapes are setting out on the final frontier. Svyantek said he hopes their research brings us one step closer to understanding the future of plant cultivation, both on this planet and others.