Synthetic life could be used on trips to Mars

I have to question whether this would ever be a practical way to produce fuel for a space mission, i'd be more inclined to put funds in to researching nuclear fusion as a power source because if we can master that then it would solve a lot of problems - by the time we get around to launching a manned mission to Mars we may already have it.

Growing normal plants in zero gravity is tricky at best. The roots and stems do not grow normally. The synthetic plants may have the ability to grow better than their natural counterparts. However, with anything synthesized (I interpret genetically engineered here) there will be side effects. Unless we increase our speed the trips between even the closest planets will prove to be very long and hard to store enough food. There are all sorts of ways to address this problem but the idea of this article is to provide a viable source of vegetables to eat.