from the now-I'm-a-farmer-and-I'm-digging-digging-digging dept.
A first: Scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon:
In a new paper published in the journal Communications Biology, University of Florida researchers showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil. Their study also investigated how plants respond biologically to the Moon's soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from soil found on Earth.
This work is a first step toward one day growing plants for food and oxygen on the Moon or during space missions. More immediately, this research comes as the Artemis Program plans to return humans to the Moon.
[...] "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," Ferl said. "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 complication: The scientists only had 12 grams -- just a few teaspoons -- of lunar soil with which to do this experiment. On loan from NASA, this soil was collected during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions to the Moon. Paul and Ferl applied three times over the course of 11 years for a chance to work with the lunar regolith.
[...] Before the experiment, the researchers weren't sure if the seeds planted in the lunar soils would sprout. But nearly all of them did.
[...] "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 that the plants perceive the lunar soil environment as stressful," 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 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?" Elardo said.
"We wanted to do this experiment because, for years, we were asking this question: Would plants grow in lunar soil," Ferl said. "The answer, it turns out, is yes."
Short inspirational (though not very detailed) video: https://youtu.be/sHrUw1sBm1U
Journal Reference:
Paul, Anna-Lisa, Elardo, Stephen M., and Ferl, Robert. Plants grown in Apollo lunar regolith present stress-associated transcriptomes that inform prospects for lunar exploration [open], Communications Biology, 5, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03334-8
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:15AM (10 children)
Surely they could analyze and replicate the lunar soil; that would allow much more experimentation, and perhaps even breeding the plants over multiple generations to better tolerate it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:25AM (2 children)
Soil is simply not necessary to grow plants [wikipedia.org]. The only possible reason to fail to grow plants in the lunar regolith is if the lunar regolith itself was somehow toxic to the plant.
The samples from the Apollo missions have presumably been analyzed up the wazoo and I don't think anyone noticed any evidence of such toxicity. But I guess the only way to be totally sure is to try it with the real stuff and see, so now we know.
That being said, I thought the Chinese did this years ago on one of their lunar lander missions.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:37AM
No. The Chinese plant was in a closed canister. So it got lunar gravity, sunlight and radiation, but not lunar soil.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Sunday May 15 2022, @07:09AM
On a similar vein, I seem to remember that back in the days of the Apollo missions, they had tried growing plants in lunar soil, and the plants thrived in it. I.e., they got exactly the opposite results from this study.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday May 15 2022, @08:28AM (2 children)
That was my immediate response as well, why waste the original when you can create infinite quantities of an analogue and use that under more realistic conditions?
Mind you I'd be pretty surprised if they wouldn't grow in lunar soil or any other kinds of soil for that matter, I mean you can plant stuff like kudzu in concrete and water it with weedkiller and it'll grow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @12:25PM
They also planted seeds in regular soil and a lunar soil substitute, as controls.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:12PM
Many studies have in fact been done with analogues. But an analogue is only that - analogous. It's only going to have those properties in common that you thought to measure and were able to replicate. The real thing will have unavoidable differences, and those differences may make a critical difference - you don't know until you've actually tested it.
As I recall, lunar regolith contains minerals which either can't form on Earth, or which have long since broken down here in the presence of water. To say nothing of the various volatile compounds, which are still poorly understood likely to be chemically active.
Soon enough we should have labs on the moon, and be able to cheaply return multiple tons of regolith to Earth for testing. But for now we're striving to use what precious little we have to prepare for that day so we can hit the (lunar) ground running.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @03:49PM (2 children)
We can mostly replicate the bulk mechanical properties that matter to a rover but as this experiment showed we can't yet replicate the fine details that matter to a living organism. All Earth soils are infused with biological material and organisms that plants depend on to grow. Moon rock doesn't have that. Breeding new plants is a dead end because over time any lunar soil used for farming would become more Earth-like, and thus unsuitable to the new plants. A better approach is to figure out how to prepare lunar soil to make it more palatable to Earth plants. Chemical treatment may be required for some soils but just as important is knowing which bacterial cultures to introduce and in what order. This study is the first step in figuring all of that out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @02:42AM (1 child)
Start with sand, which is just ground up rocks, devoid of organic material and essentially sterile.
Plant seeds, add water.
They'll grow just fine. In fact, sterile media is preferable (if impractical) for sprouting seeds.
The requirements for growth are water and CO2. For a crop, nitrogen. Soil is not required.
The Martian didn't know what he was doing. Could have just crapped in his garden and lo! fertilizer!!
Not to mention he should have freeze-dried his damned potatoes for transport.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @03:37PM
You need some minerals to be delivered to the plants as well for them to grow. There is a reason fertilizer tells you its NPK content (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium).
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @02:36AM
Further, there is no single "soil" on Earth -- it varies drastically from one region or even one patch to the next. And there is likewise no single "plant" requirement. Some like a swamp, others like a desert. Highly acidic, highly alkali, and everything between. High in nutrients and nutrients entirely lacking. Create a soil, and something will grow in it (not necessarily what you hoped to grow, but something). Further, existing soil can be amended (manure is popular, and if you're living there, available).
Where I lived in the desert, as the local agronomist put it, we didn't have soil, we had dirt. ZERO nitrogen, and so alkali it was off the portable tester's scale. Lots of stuff still grew in it, notably roses and tomatoes.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:50AM
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @09:01AM
welcome to the THROBBING CIA GLOW NIGGER COCKS PARADE! Join in by clapping at your monitor and blow a kiss.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday May 15 2022, @10:30AM
Life...uh...finds a way.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Sunday May 15 2022, @01:31PM (9 children)
I don't know how the lower gravity would affect agriculture on the moon, but on the bright side the sunlight's the same flavor as Earth's and weather would never be a factor. It is a funny thought that in the future our descendants might look up and see a Moon that really is green.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @03:52PM
n/t
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:28PM (7 children)
>the sunlight's the same flavor as Earth's
Eh... sort of. The Earth's atmosphere tweaks it a LOT. On the moon:
- It's about 40% stronger
- It contains far more dangerous UV radiation, with no ozone layer to block it.
- It's far whiter light. Our sun looks yellow for the same reason our sky is blue - the atmosphere scatters blue light, reflecting much of it back into space, and distributing the rest fairly uniformly across the sky.
Those could all probably be fixed with the right filtration, but still leave the biggest problem:
- A lunar day lasts about 709 hours. Those 355 hours of continuous daylight could be intermittently shaded to simulate the 24-hour days plants evolved for easily enough, but those 355 hours of continuous darkness are going to require artificial lighting, rendering the similarity of lunar sunlight completely irrelevant.
Granted, early outposts are likely to be positioned in near-continuous sunlight, but there's only a few such locations available near the poles, all of which extremely high up in extremely rough terrain - and thus unsuitable for the industrial development that's the actual goal. (Plus, you're still generally talking a night that lasts 40-200 hours, depending on the exact location and time of year)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @02:44AM (6 children)
Also, a lot of crops are day-length sensitive. They need a daily cycle. Fortunately if you have sun all the time, and a way to cut it off on demand, you can control this.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday May 16 2022, @02:06PM (5 children)
As I mentioned. And unfortunately, nowhere useful on the moon gets sun all the time. The peaks of eternal light aren't actually big enough to do much on - and the very top of a mountain peak is a lousy place to build a mining base anyway. Or much of anything else. You can't send out exploratory rover missions from the top of a jagged, completely unweathered mountain peak. And there's nowhere to land rockets either.
The rim of Shackleton Crater gets a lot of sunlight - but you've still got much longer nights than on Earth, especially in winter.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @02:47PM (4 children)
In short, absent a lot of engineering (and concomitant funding), it's all sub-optimal for everything. But especially for agriculture. Never mind the dirt; where do they plan to get the water and CO2 (and how do they plan to keep it near the plants, short of doming 'em?)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday May 16 2022, @04:31PM (3 children)
Umm... obviously any farming would be done within the pressurized habitat. That's going to be true pretty much everywhere in the solar system.
And they'd get water the CO2 from the same place plants here on Earth do - from fungal and animal (astronaut) metabolisms burning oxygen and hydrocarbon compounds made by previous plants. The ecosystem loops would be a lot smaller than we're accustomed to, but they should work just as well - especially with a constant influx of new raw material in the form of imported hydrocarbons in rations, and oxygen refined from the local regolith (likely one of the first major exports for rocket propellant, and NASA plans to have the proof of concept technology working within the decade).
There's likely to be some some locally mined water as well - recent studies suggest there's far more water present in the regolith than expected - still small amounts, but enough to be worth capturing when mining regolith. Hydrocarbons from Earth will be an important import for ecological growth for some time to come though, as both elements seem to be very rare on the moon's surface.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @04:49PM (2 children)
All that, yeah. But people talk like they're going to be doing surface farming with no soil amendments. So figure out what it needs and amend it, just like you would any marginal land you want to use for crops.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday May 16 2022, @06:34PM (1 child)
What people are you listening to? I'd stop, because either they're idiots, or you're deeply misunderstanding what they're saying.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday May 16 2022, @06:48PM
No, just some of the comments here (and yeah, shaking head).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 15 2022, @02:26PM (1 child)
Just a guess, but I would've thought extraterrestrial regolith would have to be prepared first. Seeded with nitrogen fixing bacteria, and whichever archaea can break down the substances into material the plants can use.
While plants get their carbon from the air, not the ground, plants do need traces of some elements. Australia especially has an old and poor surface. There is this area in South Australia known as the Ninety Mile Desert. Plants wouldn't grow well there, and what did grow was deficient in what sheep needed. The rainfall wasn't much, but it was enough that there should've been more plants. Turned out the soil was lacking in several elements. As I recall, one missing element was selenium. Need only a trace, and can easily end up with the opposite problem, too much selenium. Once these were added, the region was well suited for agriculture.
Selenium deficiency doesn't manifest in no plants at all. Some plants don't need it. Others will grow, but not well, and will be weaker, prone to withering and dying early. Need to grow the plants over a longer period to answer these questions. Still, the experiment is a nice start.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday May 15 2022, @06:46PM
In practice it likely would be. A few days in a rock tumbler would might do wonders for removing the razor edges of lunar dust, and adding fertilizers with necessary (not-so-) trace elements would make a huge difference chemically.
But the first step to that is testing how plants actually do in the regolith unaided. Especially as seedlings that have a pre-packaged reserve of everything they need except air and water, you find out if there's things in the regolith that would be a problem. There's lots of minerals and volatile compounds in regolith that just don't exist on Earth. If any are a problem, then you could be talking much more serious remediation being needed. Not unlike having to remove selenium from soil that has too much.
And it sounds like there are problems, but not catastrophic ones. With a little luck a bit of fertilizer may get the job done well enough to kick-start the process, and the plants and their attendant bacteria will be able to do the rest themselves within a few generations. Even if the regolith just provides a support substrate for what amounts to a sand-supported aeroponics system, it could still drastically reduce the equipment needed from Earth, and make building out with local materials far more convenient.