Researchers Able To Cultivate And Grow Plant Using Lunar Soil

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For many years, many have wondered if we could actually sustain life in space, included here would be the plants. If we were to live elsewhere, would we be able to plant and replicate our forests here?

Food comes from plants that have been grown in soil, that we know. Recently, they collected samples from the moon and for the first time, cultivated plants in them. This has paved the way for what they believe could be migration happening across the solar system.

Just imagine how pioneers would be able to create crops in other planets, much like what happened in The Martian. In the movie, Matt Damon’s stranded astronaut manages to grow potatoes on Mars to help him survive. This could very well be life imitating art because researchers managed to cultivate cress in regolith that had been kept on the planet for half a century. This had been there since the Apollo missions to the moon.

It may have been the first step for man and one giant leap for mankind then, but this is a first towards producing food and oxygen on the moon, or perhaps during space missions. In the next decade, NASA has already made plans for the Artemis program. The goal is to lay the foundation for a self-sustaining colony on the heavenly body.


The program will utilize the moon to validate deep space systems and operations. They aim to complete this before they embark on a manned voyage to the Red Planet, just like Damon’s character.

“Artemis will require a better understanding of how to grow plants in space,” co-author Professor Rob Ferl said. “For future, longer space missions, we may use the moon as a hub or launching pad. It makes sense that we would want to use the soil that’s already there to grow plants. So, what happens when you grow plants in lunar soil, something that is totally outside of a plant’s evolutionary experience? What would plants do in a lunar greenhouse? Could we have lunar farmers?”

The University of Florida team planted thale cress seeds in lunar soil that had been picked up by the Apollo 11, 12, and 17 crews between the years 1969 and 1972. What they did was add water, nutrients, and light. They then observed how the spring salad green that was fit for consumption flourish. In order to pull this off, they built a tiny ‘lunar garden’ from a few teaspoons of the prized dirt that was specially loaned from NASA. The university was finally granted 12 grams. This had been a long wait as it took 11 long years of constant negotiations.

The wells were thimble-sized and found in plastic plates that were traditionally used to culture cells. Each one was filled with a gram of lunar soil. To moisten the soil, they blended a cocktail of nutrients before a few seeds of cress were added in each ‘pot.’

 

Fresh Green Growth

Guardian

The horticulturalists were a little unsure at first and they pretty much assumed that they wouldn’t sprout. Surprisingly, nearly all of the pods did. “We were amazed. We did not predict that,” co-author Prof Anna-Lisa Paul said. “That told us the lunar soils didn’t interrupt the hormones and signals involved in plant germination.”

The outcome now gives opportunities for “resource independence” from Earth. NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have committed to sending people to Mars sometime in the near future. Of course, there are substantial logistical challenges that they need to worry about, one of which would be the transportation of food all the way from Earth. This would be difficult and altogether impractical. It’s more sensible to produce plants locally.

In the famous Damon film, he fertilizes Martian soil with feces. He sliced the potatoes and planted the cuttings. In the end, he was able to produce enough food that lasted hundreds of days.

Even in the very early days of lunar exploration, plants had always been important, said Prof. Paul. She explained, “Plants helped establish that the soil samples brought back from the moon did not harbour pathogens or other unknown components that would harm terrestrial life. But those plants were only dusted with the lunar regolith and were never actually grown in it.”


Prof. Paul and Prof. Ferl are internationally recognized experts in the field of plants, particularly in space. In the past, they had been able to send experiments on space shuttles, to the International Space Station, and on suborbital flights.

Thale cress, or Arabidopsis, is native to Europe, Asia, and Africa. This has been commonly used in research because its genetic code had already been fully mapped. Plus, cultivating plants in lunar soil brings about new knowledge and findings on how plants would be impacted, including how its gene expression may alter and adjust. The seeds were also planted in basaltic and volcanic ash that’s local to the planet as well as simulated Martian soils. The latter acted as the control group.

They had observed differences over time. Some ‘lunar’ plants were smaller, grew more slowly, or were more varied in size when these were compared to the earth equivalents. The researchers saw these as signs that they were working to adjust to the chemical and structural makeup of the lunar soil. They further confirmed this with the gene expression analysis.

One Giant Leap for Plants

Cnet

“At the genetic level, the plants were pulling out the tools typically used to cope with stressors, such as salt and metals or oxidative stress. So we can infer the plants perceive the lunar soil environment as stressful,” Prof. Paul said. “Ultimately, we would like to use the gene expression data to help address how we can ameliorate the stress responses to the level where plants – particularly crops – are able to grow in lunar soil with very little impact to their health.”

The team also observed how plants with the most signs of stress were those grown in what geologists call mature lunar soil. Their genetic makeup changed when they were exposed to the more cosmic wind as well. Those seedlings grown in comparatively younger soils had matured better. Moreover, the growth process may have also changed the soils as well.

“The Moon is a very, very dry place. How will minerals in the lunar soil respond to having a plant grown in them, with the added water and nutrients? Will adding water make the mineralogy more hospitable to plants,” Dr. Stephen Elardo, a co-author of the study, questioned.

Follow-up studies will be made to answer these queries and the others that may follow. At this point in time, the researchers have come to just celebrate the possibility of ‘growing plants on the moon’.

 

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