Ahouxt.197
net.columbia
utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!houxi!houxt!govern
Fri Apr  2 15:06:39 1982
Re: Shuttle Plants and Security
I once read a US Govt reprint (now lost) of a Russian paper called
"The Life of an Onion, Not Knowing Down from Up".  Conclusion was that
plants generally need gravity to know where to send roots and where
to send leaves; light wasn't enough, and the plants tended to get
confused and die.  However, a small electrical field provided enough
information for the plant to choose a "down" and an "up", and grow
successfully.  One technique used in the study was putting the seeds, dirt,
light source, etc. in a container which was turned over every 10 seconds
or so -- this was the cheapest available substitute for zero-gravity,
since the cost of the real thing would have been too high.