A First: Scientists Grow Plants in Soil from the Moon
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (University of Florida Media Relations) — Scientists have grown plants in soil from the moon, a first in human history and a milestone in lunar and space exploration.
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.
“Artemis will require a better understanding of how to grow plants in space,” said Rob Ferl, one of the study’s authors and a distinguished professor of horticultural sciences in the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).
Even in the early days of lunar exploration, plants played an important role, said Anna-Lisa Paul, also one of the study’s authors and a research professor of horticultural sciences in UF/IFAS.
“Plants helped establish that the soil samples brought back from the moon did not harbor 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,” Paul said.
Paul and Ferl are internationally recognized experts in the study of plants in space. Through the UF Space Plants Lab, they have sent experiments on space shuttles, to the International Space Station and on suborbital flights.
“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?”
To begin to answer these questions, Ferl and Paul designed a deceptively simple experiment: plant seeds in lunar soil, add water, nutrients and light, and record the results.
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.
The small amount of soil, not to mention its incalculable historical and scientific significance, meant that Paul and Ferl had to design a small scale, carefully choreographed experiment. To grow their tiny lunar garden, the researchers used thimble-sized wells in plastic plates normally used to culture cells. Each well functioned as a pot. Once they filled each “pot” with approximately a gram of lunar soil, the scientists moistened the soil with a nutrient solution and added a few seeds from the Arabidopsis plant.
Arabidopsis is widely used in the plant sciences because its genetic code has been fully mapped. Growing Arabidopsis in the lunar soil allowed the researchers more insight into how the soil affected the plants, down to the level of gene expression.
As points of comparison, the researchers also planted Arabidopsis in JSC-1A, a terrestrial substance that mimics real lunar soil, as well as simulated Martian soils and terrestrial soils from extreme environments. The plants grown in these non-lunar soils were the experiment’s control group.
Before the experiment, the researchers weren’t sure if the seeds planted in the lunar soils would sprout. But nearly all of them did.
“We were amazed. We did not predict that,” Paul said. “That told us that the lunar soils didn’t interrupt the hormones and signals involved in plant germination.”
However, as time went on, the researchers observed differences between the plants grown in lunar soil and the control group. For example, some of the plants grown in the lunar soils were smaller, grew more slowly or were more varied in size than their counterparts.
These were all physical signs that the plants were working to cope with the chemical and structural make-up of the moon’s soil, Paul explained. This was further confirmed when the researchers analyzed the plants’ gene expression patterns.
“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.”
How plants respond to lunar soil may be linked to where the soil was collected, said Ferl and Paul, who collaborated on the study with Stephen Elardo, an assistant professor of geology at UF.
For instance, the researchers found that the plants with the most signs of stress were those grown in what lunar geologists call mature lunar soil. These mature soils are those exposed to more cosmic wind, which alters their makeup. On the other hand, plants grown in comparatively less mature soils fared better.
Growing plants in lunar soils may also change the soils themselves, Elardo said.
“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.
Follow up studies will build on these questions and more. For now, the scientists are celebrating having taken the first steps toward growing plants on the moon.
“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.”
Support and funding for this work was provided by NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division, NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, NASA grant NNX14AT24G, NASA grant 80NSSC19K0752 and the University of Florida
21 responses to “A First: Scientists Grow Plants in Soil from the Moon”
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Folks are getting sloppy in their language which often leads to sloppy science. Technically soils are a mix of organic and non-organic material, often a fairly complex ecosystem, so unless they found microorganisms in the lunar regolith samples it is regolith not soil.
Well, they started with a regolith, it becomes a soil quickly thereafter as plants go through a growth cycle.
it is regolith and Tom points out but still impressive
Yes, the question is how much of the nutrients are coming from the regolith and how much are mixed in the water.
I am sure almost all of them are mixed in from the water…
11 grams of regolith. I think this is more that plants can grow in the presence of regolith than growing in it. When 11 kg (or 11tons) is used, Then there will be answers to work with. As in, is the regolith a good growth medium, or is it a substitute hydroponic structure of no nutritional value? I suspect somewhere between.
edit/adding an hour later. If this is indeed an important test, it is a half century overdue. If not important, why bother?
If I recall in the early research they did right after Apollo 11 for determining if moon dust was a biohazard they actually found plants grew better when it was added to Earth soil because it contained micronutrients that acted like fertilizer. So it is likely there is some benefit from the lunar particles. It would be interesting to try some of the soil organisms found near volcanoes that convert lava into very rich soils to see if they have the same effect on regolith.
I ran across a paper linked from transterrestrial that claimed that the regolith was not a good growth medium. All the plants in regolith showed some stress characteristics with many of them stunted. As far as I could tell, various salts and metals in the regolith were the problem.
It will require a bit of exploring to find the useful soils on the moon as the Apollo 11 samples were the worst and Apollo 17 samples the best compared to the simulant control groups. Seems to me that there might be some regolith processing required to create a healthy growth environment. Even on Earth there are areas where certain plants don’t grow well. Too acidic or salty and such for many species.
IMO, it is unlikely that atmosphere and water will be sufficient to grow plants well in Lunar regolith. It will get there after a bit of work and investigation is done.
Given that CEA systems on Earth are moving away from using any soil by going to aeroponic systems there will be little need for it for producing food and even so less if cellular agriculture starts to advance as indicated by early research. For example research that is being done with coffee could be easily expanded to other plants for producing food. So if any lunar regolith is used in habitats it will likely be just as an aggregate medium and it will likely be a side product of mining activities that has been processed to be harmless.
https://phys.org/news/2021-…
September 16, 2021
Coffee cells produced in a bioreactor through cellular agriculture
by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Interesting article. Has one wondering if another agricultural revolution is in the works. Local exotics year around??
Yes, an agricultural revolution that has the potential to be as important in human history as the invention of farming. Given that roughly half of the world’s land area is used for agriculture that has huge environmental and economic implications, even greater that the potential of the CEA systems being built.
I wish we had antigravity. I bet it would be great for cement/concrete
Hilarious reading the spacex fanboys comments about anything having to do with the once-verboten Moon (before spacex smelled money).
It is like they are trying to keep on maliciously naysaying but they have been lobotomized in some way and cannot. The bizarro confusion the spacex cult faces whenever one of their tenets get’s thrown in the trash is a wonder to behold.
And this is good news for those who understand the Moon was always the place to go and Mars is a over-hyped dead end. Try and grow anything in Martian soil and it turns into perchlorate toxic waste.
It’s sad that you’re a one-note commenter. Blocked.
Speaking about Elon Musk, did you see where President Shotwell mentioned that SpaceX is exploring nuclear propulsion for its Mars flights?That should drive all of the environmentalists bonkers…?
No I didn’t see that Thomas. Are you confusing “nuclear propulsion” with rocket jesus nuking Mars to turn it into a paradise? Or is “nuclear propulsion” what she calls bringing back the old coke recipe so he has something to go with the smoke?
It gets confusing after a while.
Sounds like she is your President though. Good for you. Show what you are.
President Shotwell was talking about nuclear propulsion to reduce travel time to Mars, an idea NASA has been studying since the 1960’s. I will link to the article here later today.
Why do you address her as “President Shotwell” like she is the President of the United States? Are you that far gone?
That is her title at the firm, one she earned. Here is the link.
https://twitter.com/justinb…
It is pretty obvious what her title is in your mind. Don’t need a link. You just want less drama I think. Isn’t that what your wacky cult would love to hear? That Gwen is running for President since Elon cannot? C’mon.
The freak show is sooooo transparent.
“Biden’s mistake is that he thinks he was elected to transform the country,” Musk told his millions of fans. “But actually everyone just wanted less drama.”
The sooner this celebrity super-nut crashes and burns the better for everyone.
I’m no fan of nuclear propulsion, but it would be interesting to see what SpaceX could do about improving the generally crummy thrust-to-weight ratios of NTP engines.