Captain Aman Johri, aeronautical engineer and analogue astronaut from Mumbai, has completed a microgravity research flight carrying agricultural crop samples from Maharashtra. The goal: to understand how plant biology responds to the absence of gravity, and then combine those findings with nuclear irradiation — all under the banner of the Astra Farm Project.
The selected samples — onion and potato, two staple crops of the Indian region — were carried aboard a specially designed passive payload developed in collaboration with NRC-CNRC Canada. During the flight, plant tissues were exposed to reduced-gravity conditions to initiate detailed investigations into how plant cells and tissues respond to that environment. The microgravity phase has now been completed.
Next comes the stage with the most far-reaching implications for nuclear research. The samples will be subjected to controlled nuclear irradiation at facilities associated with the BARC — the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay, Mumbai — and India’s Department of Atomic Energy, in partnership with Hindustan Agro Co-Op Ltd, a cooperative backed by the Maharashtra state government. Researchers will compare irradiated and non-irradiated samples to study biological, physiological and cellular variations. The underlying question: whether the combination of microgravity and irradiation opens new avenues for space agriculture and for developing more resilient crops on Earth as well.
BARC has a long track record in this field. Between 2020 and 2025, the Department of Atomic Energy developed and released 23 new plant varieties through radiation-induced mutagenesis — including 7 rice varieties, 5 mustard and 3 sorghum. Overall, the so-called Trombay varieties — named after the Mumbai suburb where the centre is located — have delivered an estimated 15 to 20% increase in farmers’ income. On the preservation side, gamma irradiation using Cobalt-60 is already deployed to extend the shelf life of onions, potatoes, spices and fruit destined for export to the United States and Australia. The country’s first food irradiation plant was built by BARC back in 1965.
Project Astra Farm fits into a broader national push. India is advancing space agriculture on multiple fronts: ISRO has already carried out the CROPS mission, the agency’s first biological experiment aimed at growing plants in microgravity aboard an orbital platform. Johri’s work stands out for its nuclear angle — it does not simply observe plant growth under weightlessness, but introduces irradiation as an independent experimental variable. The expected results will feed into the design of food systems for long-duration missions, lunar bases and, looking further ahead, Mars settlements, where reliable agricultural production remains one of the most concrete technical challenges.
Should the comparative data between irradiated and non-irradiated samples bear out the researchers’ hypotheses, India could have a replicable experimental model on its hands: crops subjected first to gravitational stress and then to nuclear irradiation, to select plant lines suited to space environments. It is an approach that brings together BARC’s six decades of nuclear expertise and the emerging frontier of astrobotany. The next step will be making that data available to the international scientific community.
