Narangba State School

Narangba State School have an great experiment - 'Bush Tucker' seeds! Perhaps some translation is required for the overseas schools. 'Bush' refers to the Australian countryside, 'Tucker' is another word for food - so it is seeds of plants which grow wild that provide a source of food...

Experiment

This is an excerpt from the full experiment write-up which may be made available as a downloadable file in Acrobat Reader (.pdf) format.

Experiment Name:      “Bush Tucker In Space”

School Description:

Narangba Primary School is a semi-rural school located 30 minutes north of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Narangba School has a total of 545 enrolled primary school age children from years 1 to 7 and 90 Pre-school children aged 4 - 5 years old. Our school has 1 Principal - Mr Shane Urquhart, 1 Deputy - Mrs Sonya McInally, 1 Learning Support Teacher, Reading Recovery Teacher, Music, Physical Education, 2 Teacher Librarians and a total of 21 classroom teachers on staff.  We have KLA Co-ordinators in Maths, Science, SOSE and Literacy.

 Experimenter Team:

The students conducting the experiment will be the whole class of 31 students, 21 boys and 10 girls.  The student’s classroom teacher, Mrs Judy Costigan (Science Co-ordinator) and Mr Darryl Wright (Greening Australia Officer) working outside the school at CREEC (Caboolture River Environmental Education Centre).  Mr Wright helped the class of 5A collect, clean, sort and identify the bush tucker seeds.

 Experiment Description:

The experiment is to send samples of 6 native bush tucker seed types into orbit, exposing the seeds to zero gravity conditions, extreme cold and solar radiation.  On return to Earth the seeds will be planted next to seeds of the same type, a control group to compare:

• Growth rate

• Abnormalities

• Fruit/berry/nut bearing

• Render the seed infertile?

 The type of seeds being sent are:

(a)   Vigna Vexittata - Maloga Bean

(b)   Pilidiostigma Glabra

(c)   Lomandra Longi Folia - Long leaf mat rush

(d)   Austromyritus Dulcis - Midiym Berry

(e)   Gahnia Siberiania

(f)     Ficus Obliqua - Small leafed fig.

All of these seeds were collected fresh on the 2nd April 2000 from the Murrumba Downs District.

Experiment Purpose Hypothesis:

We expect that the exposure to conditions in space will not render the seeds infertile.  It is envisaged that the experiment may help Space Scientists and World Horticulturists to measure how long a seed may be exposed to zero gravity conditions to render it infertile or delaying the fertilization cycle of a seed.

At present our existing Science Syllabus encourages children to learn of life cycles in plants, plant structures, energy receivers, root growth and flower dissecting.  This experiment will re-inforce the effects on active seeds exposed to natural phenomenon.

Our school is building their first Greenhouse to encourage all year levels to actively participate - hands on with the propagation of seeds and plant parts.  Hence our experiment will be monitored by the whole school to graph observations of bush tucker seeds growing after they have been exposed to zero gravity conditions and comparing seeds of same type exposed to normal gravity conditions and temperature.

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