Farming on Mars may be possible: research

09 September 2014 - 15:25 By Bruce Gorton
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A fresh new crater on Mars.
A fresh new crater on Mars.
Image: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Scientists have managed to grow plants in simulated Martian and lunar soil, a first step to figuring out if we could grow crops on the red planet.

According to their study in the online free journal PloS One, if we want to set up permanent settlements on the moon or mars we're going to have to learn how to farm using lunar and Martian soil.

The researchers wanted to know if this was actually possible.

While lunar soil hasn't been found to be poisonous to plants (thanks to research done after the Apollo mission) nobody has actually tried to grow anything in it.

So the researchers set about getting ahold of Mars and moon regolith simulant from Orbitec and tried to grow things in it, with river sand as a control.

They picked four crops, four nitrogen fixers and four wild plants to run the test - going with plants that have small seeds and in the case of the wild ones, that grow in poor quality soil.

Only one of the plants, a nitrogen fixer called common vetch, didn't germinate but when it came time to form leaves, flowers and seeds only three species pulled it off - field mustard, cress and rye.

Interestingly the soil of Mars was the most successful tested - beating even the river sand of Earth.

Field mustard only got to the point of forming seeds in the Martian soil while Crss and rye formed seeds in that and the earth sand.

"Apparently, in general, plants were able to develop at the same rate on Martian and Earth soil simulants, but biomass increment was much higher on Mars simulant," the researchers wrote.

So can we farm on Mars? Maybe.

The researchers caution that the regoliths they used are not the actual soil of the two alien environments, and thus may not be representative of what we find there.

They further warn that their test was done in Earth gravity - which is a bit higher than on either the red planet or moon.

But at least the soil quality doesn't appear to rule it out.

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