Scientists show how to make lunar soil fertile for agriculture

If the humanity establishes long-term foundations in the Moon, you will need a regular source of food. However, it is not practical to think that you can plant corn either wheat in greenhouses on flat lunar soil on the Moon and expect a bountiful harvest, or none at all.

But scientists are taking steps to make lunar farming a real possibility. Researchers said Thursday that they have found a way to make the Moon’s inhospitable terrain fertile by introducing bacteria that increase the availability of phosphorus, an important nutrient for plants.

They conducted experiments growing a relative of tobacco using simulated lunar soil, more properly called lunar regolith, in a laboratory in China.

They found that treated with three species of bacteria produced plants with longer stems and roots, as well as heavier and wider clusters of leaves, compared to the same soil without the microbes.

According to the researchers, the action of the bacteria caused the soil to become more acidic. This low pH environment caused insoluble phosphate-containing minerals to dissolve and release the phosphorus they contain, increasing the availability of the mineral to plants.

“The importance of these findings is that perhaps we can use these microbes to convert lunar regolith into a biofriendly substrate for growing plants in future lunar greenhouses,” says researcher Yitong Xia, from the Chinese Agricultural University in Beijing, lead author of the study published in the journal Communications Biology.

In a study published last year, researchers in the United States grew a flowering herb called Arabidopsis thaliana in 12 thimble-sized containers, each containing a gram of real lunar soil collected during NASA missions more than half a century ago.

Arabidopsis, also called thale cress, is a type of cress widely used in scientific research. In that study, the plant grew, but not as strongly in lunar soil as in Earth’s volcanic ash used for comparative purposes, suggesting that lunar soil could use a little help to become more fertile.

The new research focused on Nicotiana benthamiana, another plant often used in research.

The study used simulated regolith instead of the real thing, because authentic lunar soil is scarce on Earth. Researchers used volcanic material from the Changbai Mountains in China’s Jilin province to create soil with chemical and physical properties similar to soil on the Moon.

The three bacteria used in the study were: Bacillus mucilaginosus, Bacillus megaterium and Pseudomonas fluorescens. The researchers tried others, but they did not have the same beneficial effects.

“Taking into account the enormous scientific and economic potential of the Moon, in the future we will need to establish manned lunar bases. But how can we provide food, oxygen and water to the crew? Of course, we can take them to the Moon on rockets, but that is economically unsustainable. “A greenhouse for growing plants on the Moon could greatly reduce the need for Earth-Moon transportation.”Xia said.

A plant growing system on the Moon could help meet the long-term food and oxygen needs of human crews, he added. Plants produce oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, the biological process in which they convert sunlight into energy.

“We have several ways to grow plants on the Moon, including transporting horticultural soil to the Moon, building a hydroponic system (growing plants without soil), or using soil substitutes such as hydrogels (gels whose liquid component is water). “These methods do not require lunar soil, but all of them would consume enormous rocket transport capacity, which would make these plans much more expensive,” Xia explains.

“Instead, our technique, which is a type of in situ resource utilization, applies microbial improvement to lunar soil, making it more fertile and suitable for growing plants.”Xia added. “Our study achieves the same goal with much less charging capacity consumption compared to other plans.”

Source: Reuters.