Terri Lomax says researchers sometimes tailor their requests.

N.C. State University's vice chancellor said that a lot of the earmarks the college requests are for orphaned research that does not fit into existing programs through the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Often, it's because it's not basic research but not yet commercially viable.

But it can also be because there is no federal program that covers the topic, she said, citing a National Textiles Center on campus that looks at new methods and markets for textiles.

"There's not a federal agency with a clear mandate for providing research on textiles," she said.

She said that researchers often look for ways to fit their research into existing programs, such as military research or even the NASA budget. That's how an earmark came about that would study the effects of the Martian atmosphere on plants.

"It has lots of other uses for agriculture, such as understanding how plants to respond to stress conditions in the environment such as drought or global warming," she said.

An earmark from two state Democrats would study how plants could live on the moon and Mars.

Reps. G.K. Butterfield of Wilson and Bob Etheridge of Lillington both requested $1 million for researchers at N.C. State University to "study the effects of lunar and martian environments on plants" in order to find ways for humanity to explore outer space.

In an explanation of the earmark, Butterfield noted that NASA plans to return to the moon before 2020.

"Either basic human needs of food, air, and clean water will have to be resupplied at a high cost and risk or they could be generated by plants as in the earth's biosphere," he
wrote. "Successful research will lead to the ability to provide sustainable life support systems in an extraterrestrial environment."

In his request, Etheridge said the research is "inevitable" and could have "profound implications for Earth agriculture facing challenges of global warming, threats of bioterrorism, and increased human population."