© UF/IFAS photo by Tyler JonesBy day 16, there were clear physical differences between plants grown in the volcanic ash lunar simulant, left, compared with those grown in the lunar soil, right.
Scientists have grown plants in soil from the Moon, a first in human history and a watershed moment in lunar and space exploration.In a new research paper published in the journal
Communications Biology on May 12, 2022, University of FloridaEstablished in 1853, the University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is home to 16 academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. University of Florida offers multiple graduate professional programs, including business administration, engineering, law, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine, and administers 123 master's degree programs and 76 doctoral degree programs in eighty-seven schools and departments." data-gt-translate-attributes="[{"attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"}]">University of Florida scientists showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil. Their study also looked into how plants respond biologically to the Moon's soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from typical soil found on Earth.
This research is a first step toward growing plants for food and oxygen on the Moon or during space missions in the future. More immediately, this research comes as the
Artemis Program plans to return humans to the Moon.
© UF/IFAS photo by Tyler JonesPlacing a plant grown during the experiment in a vial for eventual genetic analysis.
"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.
© UF/IFAS photo by Tyler JonesAnna-Lisa Paul tries moistening the lunar soils with a pipette. The scientists found that the soils repelled water (were hydrophobic), causing the water to bead-up on the surface. Active stirring of the material with water was required to break the hydrophobicity and uniformly wet the soil. Once moistened, the lunar soils could be wetted by capillary action for plant culture
"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 thaliana
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."
More information: Anna-Lisa Paul, Plants grown in Apollo lunar regolith present stress-associated transcriptomes that inform prospects for lunar exploration,
Communications Biology (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03334-8.
Reader Comments
I rest my case. Dumber than moon rocks.
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Let's imagine that they got away with faking Apollo 11, do you think it would have been wise to risk faking it six more times, including Apollo 13 that never made it to the Moon? Faking things these days is relatively easy but not back then.
I have all the answers but I suspect you're just not interested.
As always, believe what you want, it doesn't matter either way, but you're trashing the greatest technological achievement in human history, and the memory of the bravest men who ever lived.
The landing sites have all been photographed and you can see them anytime you want to search. I won't reply again as these things never end! Peace.
They had to keep loading in different programs as the journey progressed. As I recall there were three different programs for the final approach to the moon.
No wonder those systems were so reliable, they were built like a hammer.
I watched it 'live' as a teenager and I could instantly tell it was faked.
Now it can be argued that the landings were real and the evidence was faked but it's pretty obvious the technology just wasn't there - just as it's not there today.
I understand it's hard to admit your government is lying to you because you then might have to question what else are they lying about but it must be admitted there's no evidence outside the official narrative.
Have a good day.
But, hey, if Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger say it's true...............
(I'm sure the Blue Pill people will disagree.)
Mistakes like that are so basic and take no time to refute at all.
Everyone saw seven Saturn Vs take off. Where did they go? Cameras filmed the separation of all three stages, you can watch these online anytime you like, it's all documented. After all these years I'm still waiting for some real evidence that I can't refute. The arguments, as I said in an earlier post are based on lack of knowledge of what actually happened, such as thinking that the LEM took off from the Cape! That is literally one of the arguments for a fake. It's been so long now that generations have grown up that are unaware of what is claimed to have happened and didn't live through the build up to the Apollo program.
Then there's the 'how did they pan the camera up as Apollo 17 took off from the Moon' question. How about finding out how that happened rather than asking the question and then doing nothing about it. The guy who did that was still alive a while back and the interview is still up probably. I'll save you the trouble: six second delay from Earth to Moon... pan camera from Mission Control six seconds before lift off. It's NASA, I think they had the brains to do something as basic as that having built a 3000 ton 300 foot rocket that developed 7.5 million pounds of thrust on take off and drained an Olympic sized swimming pool of fuel every second!
As always, believe what you want. [Link]
Couple things to make you laugh: Scientists analyzed "moon rocks" and found they were identical to those found on earth...gee.....which spawned more BS ... lending "support" to the laughable idea that a collision broke off a piece of earth to form the moon, which is still the most agreed upon hypothesis.
There are no "moon rocks" to analyze anymore - their excuse is they were "stolen" and sold in black market....
There is no original footage of the moon landings either..... NASA said they "taped over them" or lost them...gee, seems like sorta an important event.
It only takes one impossible detail to refute a hypothesis, that's how science works.
There are easily a dozen problems with the "official" story.
Here's an obvious one, photos of the "earth from moon's surface" show it at the same or similar size to the moon as viewed from the earth - though I'm sure they will change these if enough people mention this.
LOOK UP THE DIAMETER DIFFERENCE - EARTH VS MOON - THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF FISH-EYE WIDE ANGLE LENS BEING USED, THIS WOULD BE OBVIOUS.
tx
What exactly does the above prove, that seeds will still grow even when they add the Looney Soil to the mix?
wonder how they do that since we- officially- have not ever found life outside earth. may i call that an obvious lie?