Digi Plant

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  Phytometric data

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  Mars Relative-Humidity

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  Photosynthesis rate original data

Inspiration Attending International Space Station conference inspired me to follow space exploration projects. Lots of samples of plant species were being experimented in ISS to understand micro gravity effects and most recently researchers were able to sprout plant from lunar soil sample collected from past expeditions and MARS soil simulation samples are available made from terrestrial resources. Every of these experiments require highly controlled incubated setups and are expensive to actually test in realtime.So, why not simulate the extraterrestrial soil and environmental conditions which we already have data on and emulate the plant behaviors of root-soil interaction, biomass-growth, light interception photosynthetic and metabolic activities as per those conditions to predict the possible stress and anomalies compared to earths conditions. Which opens opportunity to many researchers to experiment virtually and propose suitable models to make habitation on Mars and lunar conditions without expensive setups or actually going to space.

What it does

Study and experiment on plant parameters of Resource/Biomass acquisition & allocation, Light interception, Photosynthesis, Transpiration, leaf irradiance, Radiation use efficiency, soil plant interaction and complete root to shoot architecture of plant. These parametric data is available for various species of plants under earth conditions which we are able to generate spatial and temporal plant simulations to predict plant yields or behavior. Currently live data is being generated with the help of perseverance rover with day to day data on humidity, thermal IR data, air temperature, radiation and dust and many surface and C-N atmospheric data. We aim understand the impact of variance of individual parameter on plant behavior by using MARS parameter data replaced with current available terrestrial data. The correlation and anomaly studies are applied to understand how the particular parameter ex:air temperature of earth replaced with air temperature on mars, and study alters plant behaviors.

How we built it

We obtained data of MARS parameters [https://atmos.nmsu.edu/data_and_services/atmospheres_data/PERSEVERANCE/meda.html], Air temperature, Relative humidity, Atm Pressure, Radiation and dust data available for 2020-21 and on field measured photosynthetic factors measurements of greenhouse tomato[phytomonitoring dataset]. The aim is to create photosynthesis forecasting model for Martian environment and plant behavior simulations.We've processed MARS data and derived parameters of Relative humidity,Air temp, Pressure and created datasets replacing individual parameters with that of phytomonitoring data set.We used Time series forecasting on original earth based Phytomonitoring data, then applied Anomaly Detection with Time Series Forecasting on three data sets with individually replaced Martian data to study how relative humidity of mars would effect photosynthesis with all other conditions remain terrestrial. The behavior model from original data is correlated with processed data and anomaly was observed where the output parameters photosynthesis rate and transpiration rate . As for hackathon we have chosen relative humidity as variable input parameter of mars and other input parameters from original dataset and predicted photosynthesis rate and anomaly graph wrt relative humidity was obtained which was proportional to irrational factor of abs difference of in RH of earth and mars. Using OpenAlea to simulate the plant model to visualize the plant behavior for a period of time.

Challenges we ran into

Deriving data parameters from mars dataset and adding with earth dataset synchronizing the time. Time series forecasting model with predicted and actual photosynthetic rates where we used SVM and cross validation techniques to improve the accuracy. Anomaly detection model accuracy is still to be determined as there is no actual data for mars photosynthetic rate and have to be validated from data of experiments from ISS plant habitant data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

working with perseverance rover data and project that could add value to space farming.

What we learned

Though the day and night cycles are in sync with earth there are many other challenges for plant to survive on Mars and we are trying to identify the stress factors to overcome in real time scenario.

What's next for Digi Plant

Presently I'm working on biomimicking hydraulic physiology of vascular system with MEMS to model a kit to apply fertilizers directly into tree to reduce environmental concerns. My vision is to create artificial root system with MEMS to model soil less farming in space compensating gravity and other hydraulic stress.In this process I was using the plant simulated models to understand the water distribution across the plant tissues. These models help to understand and design experiments in facilities like MELISSA SPACE RESEARCH facilities which helps for extraterrestrial exploration .

Built With

• python