The Moon Society Forum

This posting by Dave Dunlopis about work done by Dan Hawk of the ]College Menominee Nation in Green Bay.He had received succulent desert plants of two varieties from Dr. Gertrude Koening of El Paso Community College. El Paso Texas.
These Plants were planted in a substrate of JSC #1 mixed with pyrogenic carbon. These plants were grown the the table top plant chamber in the Lab with 24/7 lighting under circular florescent lamps of both red and blue at an ambients room temperature of 72 degree for two weeks. Then the plants were transferred to a refrigerator camber
with no lught for two weeks at 37 degree Fahrenheits. This cycle was conducted with no adverse effects noticed on the cactus. Indeed those cactus plants not only seemed to tolerate the cycles well but also showed new budding.
It would appear that the natural adaptation of the cactus to significant diunal temperature swings made it resistant to the swing from room temperature to 7 degrees above freezing. The lack of light during the two weeks of refrigeration seems not to have killed the metabolism of the Cactus plants..

These experiments were interrupted during May due to the ISDC conference and the need to repaint the lab facilities. The lab will be reoccupied for the start of the fall semester.
David Dunlop June 12, 2009
The lab will be down until the fall term when facilities can be reoccupied.

That's interesting. I wonder how many other species could tolerate a two-week dark cycle? Inside lunar greenhouses it shouldn't be completely dark; there will most likely be booster lamps to provide some lighting and earth plants have to be able to tolerate cloudy days.