February 17, 2009

found out about something rather 'juicy' today. If you are a teacher or homeschooling parent, you may want to check this out.

Tomatosphere is an educational outreach project over the past 8 years involving more than 11,300 classrooms in Canada, the United States and inter-nationally.. The project uses the excitement of space exploration as a medium for teaching students about science, space and agriculture and the role being played by Canada as a world leader in the support of long-term space flight.

One package of seeds is the control group - Heinz 9478 F1 seeds; The second set of seeds - also Heinz H9478 - has been exposed to a simulation of the atmosphere on Mars.

Tomatosphere is sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, Heinz Canada Ltd, HeinzSeed, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Stokes Seeds and the University of Guelph.

Picture Left: Expedition 9 Flight Engineer and Science Officer (FE/SO) Edward (Mike) Fincke holds a bag of tomato seeds to be used in the Educational Payload Operations (EPO-9) Tomatosphere II project. These seeds will be given to Canadian students to use in seed growth experiments.