internationally universally did you know
that a Botanic Garden right here in
Miami is having an impact beyond our
planet
well Fairchild tropical Botanic Garden
is and it all started with an ancient
story of a group of people who felt the
need to escape thousands of years ago a
group of explorers set out to colonize a
new land leaving Asia and small
seafaring canoes these brave travelers
were in search of a new home no one knew
why they left whether it was war or
famine or just curiosity taking with
them only what they could carry they had
to make some difficult decisions without
knowing where they were going and what
they would find when they got there they
chose plants specifically seeds and
cuttings of plants that were important
culturally medicinally for food and for
building materials you can actually
follow their journey based on the plants
found along the way today we know these
people as the ancient Polynesians and
those plants those plants are some of
Hawaii’s most important crops like
bamboo or sugar cane or coconuts that
was the story that I told during my
initial meeting with the scientists
engineers and directors at NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center that made the
director of human space exploration say
wow that’s like our mission to Mars and
it was then we knew that we had a new
era of education and research at
fairchild tropical botanic garden what
we proposed was to assist NASA
scientists in testing crop options for
growth on the International Space
Station by engaging our huge network of
thousands of middle and high school
students that were already engaged in
Fairchild’s award-winning environmental
science program the Fairchild challenge
and this was something that had never
been done before and it all started with
a simple garden crop red romaine lettuce
red romaine lettuce met all of the
criteria set forth by NASA for growth on
the on the space station
it grows in small spaces thrives under
LED lights produces large amounts of
edible biomass and provides vitamins not
found in processed diets now currently
at NASA Kennedy Space Center they’ve
been testing a very small variety of
plants over that the years that they’ve
been doing this but with fair child’s
expertise we were able to expand those
options to date students middle and high
school students have tested 91 varieties
that meet these criteria some of those
that we suggested were plants that were
known for their use in long-distance
travel this this is tetra Gonia tetra
Gonia was used by Captain Cook on the
Endeavour to prevent scurvy amongst his
crew the smart scientists at Fairchild
also knew that this plant was high in
vitamin K and vitamin K is very
important in preventing bone mass loss
something that astronauts face all the
time now our biggest challenge was to
replicate the state-of-the-art and very
expensive growth chamber found on the
International Space Station with
something that was more cost effective
for a nonprofit organization and could
also withstand the wear and tear of a
school classroom imagine that
using only store-bought materials
Home Depot Lowe’s blick art supplies we
were actually able to replicate that
growth chamber the only thing that we
couldn’t replicate was zero gravity but
the scientist at NASA told us don’t
worry about it when we get to Mars
now to date we have homemade growth
chambers and a hundred and thirty-five
middle and high schools across South
Florida were there testing research
protocols that were designed in
partnership with NASA scientist dr.
Gioia Massa where students are testing
these different varieties in this
homemade growth chamber something unique
all the while using that red romaine
now since the Fairchild challenge the
program that this was being implemented
in is a program that is facilitated by
teachers it was very important for us to
make sure that the teachers were
comfortable with the material that we
were providing it was a new level of
rigor in research that they had never
done before NASA scientists agreed to
come to Fairchild and train the teachers
very helpful and what happened was
amazing students who had never grown
anything were propagating plants in
their classroom and these same students
were contributing actively contributing
to real-world research and that was
powerful and on top of all of that the
schools were contributing thousands of
points of data to the scientists at NASA
so that they could use that information
to make determinations of what was going
to be grown next in space with the help
of middle and high school students now
at Fairchild it is our philosophy that
your science is only as good as you can
communicate it and it was very important
for us to want to share this information
what we were doing but how are we gonna
do that in a way that resonated with
teenagers social media specifically
Twitter we had asked all of our schools
to regularly tweet scientifically
relevant tweets so that we could share
with the world what they were doing
but it was the unintended outcomes that
were most surprising we were able to
have a snapshot into all 35 classrooms
on a regular basis to ensure that they
were following the research protocols
that they were they were having good
success with their plans and be able to
have regular regular communications with
them and in addition those schools and
those students were able to showcase to
the entire world to the research
community that middle and high school
students using essentially homemade
materials in their classrooms in South
Florida were able to replicate and have
results that were consistent with what
was going on on the international space
station now for NASA this was tremendous
they were able to test thousands of
different sow thousands of pieces of
data they were able to test 20 times as
many varieties of plants than they ever
had the option of testing and with that
they recognized that this was very
important to continuing their research
in August of 2016 they awarded Fairchild
a grant for 1.25 million dollars to
an incredible labor of love to write a
grant to NASA for sure and what we’re
able to do now is what the Fairchild
challenge is truly all about we want to
be able to level the playing field and
be able to offer all of the equipment
and all of the resources that the
schools will need to do this research
free of charge no matter what your
school is no matter where you’re located
so now we’re able to do that but for
Fairchild the impacts are endless by
tapping into our history of exploration
the plant expertise that Fairchild is
known for and our huge network of
environmentally minded junior scientists
were able to escape the notion that
botany is a finished science to offer
infinite possibilities of where we go
next
thank you
[Applause] [Music]