Tomatosphere and Bob Morrow

In 2007 Dunham began to work on a project called Tomatosphere. Seems like just yesterday we began our contributions to this project, which is done with with the University of Guelph, Stokes Seeds, Heinz, Ontario Centres for Excellence, The Canadian Space Agency and more. Today the project continues in Canada under a new organization called Let’s Talk Science which is sponsored by the American Seed Trade Association located in the USA.

The Origins

From the time of its conception, the Tomatosphere project, under the executive direction of Bob Morrow as able to get millions of tomato seeds on the International Space Station for various periods of time. The seeds, once returned to earth, were then distributed to some 1700 classrooms across Canada along with regular tomato seeds and the students germinated both sets of seeds and compared the germination of the space seeds to the ones that never left earth. This project went on for many years.

Bob Morrow has now retired from this project, however we would like to take this opportunity to pay a tribute to this wonderful man and his contributions to society.

Tribute to Bob Morrow

Bob Morrow was a geography teacher, with teaching experience that stretches across the world from Ontario to Kenya. He has advised school boards around the planet, and is the author of some significant educational articles and books (an atlas among them). He is the recipient of several Bob Harris Awards and the Queens Silver Jubilee Medal. He is a member of the Order of Niagara and has been appointed as a lay canon in the Anglican Church of Niagara.

Tomatosphere was a very exciting project from the moment of inception. The team included an astronaut – Dr. Bob Thirsk. In fact at one board meeting of our team, people were sitting around the table as the phone rang. As you picked up the phone on speaker, person on the other end greeted everyone It was Bob Thirsk and he was calling from the Space Station! Bob promoted this project across the country and because of it innumerable children were interested in space travel, scientific research and agricultural practices. It was a true experience of learning that was informative, formative and exciting.

Conclusion

More than ever, we continue to need our children to become interested in science. The last few months experience on our planet indicates to us the need for researchers, scientists, medical people to help our planet to survive. The Tomatosphere project engendered those very things in so many children. Thanks Bob… you really have made a difference in our world.

Learn more about the Tomatosphere and this wonderful cause on their website