Lakehuman colonization of the Moon is being studied and several lines of research are already underway, whether it is to prepare communication infrastructures and launchers, to look for water and other resources on site or to imagine habitats .
One of the challenges of colonization will also be to try to grow plants directly on the moon. But can vegetation grow from the lunar soil?
Scientists from the University of Florida conducted an experiment using some precious lunar soil samples brought back from the Apollo missions.
With 12 small grams of sample, some water, nutrient and seeds, they managed to grow Arabidopsis thaliana (Thalius Cress, a roadside “weed”), which has the advantage of growing quickly and easily even in complicated environments and which is much studied because of its relatively short genetic code.
It grows, but…
At the same time, control plants were planted in terrestrial soil and in a substrate simulating the composition of lunar and Martian soils in order to observe any differences in development.
In the first days, no difference was noted between the moon shoot and the others, but over time the plant showed signs of weakness and dieback, with reduced roots.
Analysis of the plant showed that it developed as it would in an environment that was too hostile on Earth, with too many salts or heavy metals. It now remains to refine the experiment and the data to find a framework allowing the best growth of the plants, in particular for the food needs of a human colony such as foreseen in the Artemis program of NASA.
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