The Estimation of the Stability of Plants Constituting the Photosynthesizing Unit of Bioregenerative Life Support Systems for Including Them into the Plant Waste Mass Exchange

Abstract

One of the ways of increasing the closure of mass exchange processes in the bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS) may be the technology of plant cultivation on the so-called soil-like substrate (SLS) which is expected to utilize inedible plant biomass with the help of the SLS heterotrophic link. Earlier, based on the example of the radish inedible biomass, there was shown the principal possibility of its successful biological combustion (without decreasing the productivity of the plants cultivated) during their direct introduction into the SLS. The possibility of a direct plant waste introduction into the SLS could considerably simplify the technological processes of their biological combustion and increase their efficiency. However, there were no experiments carried out with respect to the other vegetables included into the BLSS photosynthesizing link. The aim of the given work is estimating the possible influence of the inedible biomass of different plant species introduced into the SLS, on the plant productivity. Several series of the test experiments were carried out. In the first experiment series, dried radish leafy tops making up 0.8 kg/m2 of the sown area, dried carrot leafy tops – 3.1 kg/m2 and dried beet leafy tops – 2.5 kg/m2 were introduced into the SLS makeup. As a test culture, there was taken the radish Raphanus sativus L of the Virovsky Beliy species. In the second experiment series, before the sowing of radish and wheat, there were introduced 1.2 kg/m2 and 3.1 kg/m2 of dry wheat straw into the SLS respectively. In the third series of the experiments, the wheat straw, before being introduced into the SLS, was subjected to the preliminary processing. In the fourth experiment series, there was studied the supposition about the possibility of decreasing the negative influence of introducing the vegetable tops into the SLS on the plant growth of the succeeding generation under the conditions of growing plants on a various-ages multi-species vegetable conveyor. According to the results of the research, the direct introduction of carrot and beet tops, as well as dry wheat straw, resulted in the considerable drop of the plant productivity. The vegetable cultivation in a conveyor mode done for three generations, also resulted in their productivity decrease. It was shown that the straw mineralization by using the method of “wet incineration” developed by Yu. A. Kudenko had completely removed the negative effect of the plant waste on the plant growth and could be the alternative way of the wheat waste utilization.