Cress seeds grown in moon dust raise hopes for lunar crops

The prospect of growing crops on the moon has gotten a little closer after some plants were grown in lunar soil for the first time.

The potential for astronauts to farm off-world crops was raised when scientists planted thale cress seeds in moon dust.

While the plants survived in the lunar soil, they fell short of thriving, growing more slowly than the plants planted in volcanic ash, and showing signs of stress.

Plants grow in lunar regolith, however they respond as if they are growing in a stress situation, according to Dr Anna-Lisa Paul. Thale cress is a small flowering plant related to broccoli and cauliflower.

The experiments are the first to see if plants can grow in lunar soil and follow an 11-year effort to obtain rare material. The researchers who conducted the tests got only 12g of the precious soil.

With space agencies planning to return humans to the surface and possibly build lunar settlements for visitors, the question of whether the moon can support crops has become more pressing.

The ability to take plants to the moon is how we will grow our own food and stay there for a while.

The researchers describe how they planted thale cress seeds in wells containing lunar soil after the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. The volcanic ash and mineral mixture that mimicked soils on the moon and Mars was planted with further cress seeds.

The scientists were surprised to see that most of the seeds had sprouted.

Some plants grew better than others. Those in lunar soil did worse than those in volcanic ash. The lunar soil is rich in iron particles, but poor in nutrition, and it is difficult to grow in because of the glass fragments from meteorites. Plants have genes that deal with environmental stress. Some people developed black spots.

The moon has an effect on temperatures on Earth.

Apollo 11 brought back one of the worst soils for growing plants. The samples returned by Apollo 12 and 17 were collected from different soil layers. The top layers of lunar soil are believed to be damaged by the sun's rays and radiation.

There are areas on the lunar surface that are billions of years younger than the rest.