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Plants as Countermeasures for Humans Living in Isolated or Extreme Environments Such as Long Term Space Flight.    G. E. Bingham¹, S. C. Bates², V.I. Gushin³, A.Vinokhodova³,  J. Marquit², & V.N. Sychev³. .¹USURF/Space Dynamics Laboratory, North Logan, UT, ²Utah State University, Logan, UT, ³Institute for Biomedical Problems, Moscow, Russia.

   Humans rely on plants for their survival in a multitude of ways. Plants provide nutritive value to organisms throughout the food-chain and support a life-sustaining atmosphere. The idea that plants provide non-nutritive value is less-established. In this presentation, we will outline a variety of ways in which plants have been shown to have positive (nonnutritive) impacts on humans such that the potential application of plants as a countermeasure for difficulties experienced by humans living in isolated or extreme environments is established and evaluated.  We summarize a literature review developed on the topic of the non-nutritive benefits of plants that was drawn from a wide variety of disciplines. We summarize a framework to organize and provide structure for addressing the potential of plants to serve as effective countermeasures in isolated/extreme environments. We also discuss work we are doing to prepare to test this framework in the ESA/IBMP Mars 525 long-term chamber study of psychological challenges for a Mars mission.  This study is being planned for 2008 in the Mars Mission Simulator located at IBMP in Moscow, Russia.

(Supported by NASA grant NNJ04HG03G)