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Arabidopsis thaliana plant
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—Florida University biologists report having succeeded in growing a terrestrial plant model, Arabidopsis thaliana in regolit or the top land of the moon. The researchers used samples brought back from the United States Space Agency’s Apollo 11, 12, and 17 missions, NASA for this research.
Professor Rob Ferl, the study’s senior author, told NASA that trying to grow plants on lunar soil is something that is completely beyond the experience of plant evolution. “We first raised the question of whether plants could grow on the regolith (above soil). And second, how it could one day help humans to stay longer on the Moon,” said Ferl.
To begin answering these questions, Professor Ferl and his colleagues designed a simple experiment: planting seeds in lunar soil, adding water, nutrients and light, and recording the results. Details of the study have been published in Nature Communications Biology by title “Plants grown in Apollo lunar regolith present stress-associated transcriptomes that inform prospects for lunar exploration” recently.
“For longer space missions in the future, we can use the Moon as a hub or launch pad. It makes sense that we want to use the existing land to grow crops,” said Ferl.
Tyler Jones
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Successfully grown Arabidopsis thaliana.
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For the study, the team only had about 12 grams or a few teaspoons of lunar soil. The land lent by NASA was obtained from the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions to the Moon.
To grow their little moon garden, the researchers used plastic containers with finger-sized recesses normally used for culturing cells. Each container serves as a pot.
After they filled each pot with about a gram of lunar soil, the scientists moistened the soil with a nutrient solution. They then added some seeds from Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant native to Eurasia and Africa.
Growing this model plant in lunar soil allowed the authors to gain more insight into how soil affects plants, down to gene expression levels.
For comparison, they also planted Arabidopsis thaliana in JSC-1A, a terrestrial substance that mimics real lunar soil, as well as Martian soil and simulated terrestrial soil from extreme environments. Plants grown on this non-moon soil were the control group of the experiment.
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