A letter home to Parents/Guardians
A letter home, or a modified version of the letter in your school newsletter, will help parents to understand the importance of this project in the development of their children's scientific literacy and their acquisition of knowledge about space and agriculture, and practical experiences in hypothesis testing, data collecting and decision making.
Communicating this information to parents is highly recommended by the Tomatosphere Project Team.
Tomatosphere is a Canadian-based research project involving more than 12,000 classrooms of Grades 2 to grade 10 students ("Tomatonauts") across Canada and the United States. The project is directly connected to the science curriculum in Canada through the Pan-Canadian Science Protocol which is used as a model for science curriculum in most provinces. The project enables students to make a contribution to a real science experiment involving research related to the development of seeds with a high germination rate for prolonged space travel.
Insert a statement such as "This year, your student in Ms X's class will have the opportunity to contribute to this project by incorporating the Tomatosphere experiment into the regular science curriculum.
Food availability and life support are major limiting factors in extended space exploration. Plants will be needed to provide a source of fresh, nutritious food and to produce a vital life support system - including oxygen, fresh water and carbon dioxide uptake. Scientists need to know if space travel affects plant germination and plant growth, before these extended missions can take place.
The tomato seeds used in the experiment are a plum tomato seed from traditional, conventional sources and have not been altered through any means (including biotechnology). They are a variety of seed from H.J. Heinz Canada - H9478 F1.
For 2010, our students will work with two packages of seeds – a control group and a group of seeds that were taken into space to the International Space Station (ISS) by CSA Astronaut, Julie Payette, on Mission STS-127, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour from July 15th to 31st, 2009. The Tomatosphere seeds were sent in four packages of 100 000 seeds each and spent approximately two months on the Station. The seeds were returned to Earth in late September 2009 onboard a NASA shuttle flight and were then sent to Stokes Seeds in Welland, Ontario for packaging.
The “treatment” to which the seeds were exposed included a number of elements during their two-month stay on the ISS. These were: 1) an increase in pressure on the Shuttle flight to the ISS, 2) the weightless environment while on board the ISS, 3) a slight increase in the amount of radiation which all living things experience outside of the Earth’s protective atmosphere and 4) on return to the Earth’s atmosphere, the seeds were again exposed to increased pressure.
Some variations of this treatment of Tomatosphere seeds have been used in past experiments but the rare opportunity to replicate exposure to ISS conditions could not be missed. This experiment will provide scientifically useful information by helping us to verify the results of the only other experiment on board the ISS in 2006.
The students will observe:
- The time required for each seed to successfully germinate.
- The per cent of successful germination in each treatment.
- The seedling vigour as determined by height measurements.
- How similar seedling vigour is in each treatment.
Students will observe the tomatoes from seedling germination, and, if possible, to full-grown tomatoes (approximately 3 months). The critical germination period is 2-3 weeks, and the growth period is about four to six weeks. Students will learn about the exciting world of science, space exploration, food and nutrition. The emphasis is on the life support environment that is required in space. However, applications are also made to the sustainability of life here on earth.
You may want to insert a section here relating the experiment to curriculum. For example, "The curriculum focus is related to the Pan-Canadian Science Protocol. For grades 3 and 4, the emphasis is on the plants, for grades 5 and 6, the focus is on space and living in space, and for grades 8-10, the central themes relate to energy and the environment." Alternatively, you could send home a "skills" list as was done in one school in Alberta.
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.
