By Carissa Wong.
The thale cress is growing in the lab.
Tyler Jones is a student at IFAS.
For the first time, lunar regolith, the powdery material on the moon's surface, has been grown in a plant.
Robert Ferl at the University of Florida said that showing plants will grow on lunar soil is a huge step towards establishing ourselves in lunar colonies.
We always take our agriculture with us when we move. He said that the ability to take plants to the moon is how we will grow our own food.
Ferl and his colleagues at the University of Florida planted thale cress seeds in 4 grams of lunar soil from each of the three Apollo missions and tracked their growth over the course of 20 days. They grew seeds in volcanic ash as a control, which is used to mimic soil from the moon.
Within 60 hours of planting, all the soil samples had seeds in them. Between day six and eight, they removed some seedlings so that only one plant grew in each gram of soil. They found that the roots of the plants grown in lunar soil were not as strong as those grown in terrestrial soil.
They found that plant leaves grown in lunar soil were smaller and had a darker color than those grown in terrestrial soil.
Anna-Lisa Paul said that they grow in lunar regolith, but they grow as if they are stressed.
The team analysed the plants' genes after 20 days. Plants grown in lunar soil have higher activity in genes that help cope with stress.
The primary reason that plants presented stress-related responses is that lunar regolith is very low in carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous. The lunar regolith is very powdery and fine-grained. Stephen Elardo said it was very abrasive.
The soil from the Apollo 11 mission was more toxic to plants than the soil from the other Apollo missions. The Apollo 11 soil had been exposed to the wind at the lunar surface for a long time.
We could mitigate that by carefully choosing where we mine for materials to grow plants on the moon.
We wouldn't get much nutrition from eating thale cress plants.
Paul said that this is a first step towards showing that plants from Earth can grow in lunar soil.
The Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Space in Norway says that the research gives them valuable insights. Knowing the biocompatibility of lunar soil is important if we want to use lunar soil as a building material for manufacturing structures such as greenhouses and human quarters.
The journal reference is Communications Biology.
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