We are very excited to be participating in Tomatosphere 2010. The students will be planting some very special tomato seeds this week!

Tomatosphere is a Canadian-based research project involving more than 12,000 classrooms of students (“Tomatonauts”) across Canada and the United States. 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.

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 aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. The seeds spent two months on the Station before returning to Earth in late September 2009.

The students will observe:
• The time required for each seed to successfully germinate.
• The percent of successful germination in each group.
• The seedling vigour as determined by height measurements.
• How similar seedling vigour is in each group.

Check out the Tomatosphere website here  http://www.tomatosphere.org