For the first time, an experiment used soil extracted from the Moon to grow plants. The work was carried out by Anna-Lisa Paul, Stephen M. Elardo and Robert Ferl of the University of Florida, USA, and brings good news and bad news for future plans to install a manned lunar base.
The positive point is that seeds of Arabidopsis thalianaone of the model organisms of botany, managed to germinate in the midst of regolith (soil) extracted from the landing sites of the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions. The negative is that all of them showed signs of stress, such as reduced growth and dark spots on the leaves .
To better understand what was happening to them, the researchers also performed a transcriptome – an analysis of which genes were active in plants – and found many signals similar to the typical reactions of these organisms when dealing with reactive oxygen species, metals and salts.
Despite this, the experiment already serves as proof of principle that, despite the difficulties, it would be possible to grow plants on the Moon. Of course, not on the surface exposed to radiation and without atmosphere, but in pressurized environments that will also house astronauts on a future moon base.
In the experiment, published in the journal Communications Biology, by the Nature group, THE. thaliana were deposited on plates, each with soil extracted from a different region of the Moon. As a control, seeds were deposited on plates with terrestrial soil created by NASA to simulate the lunar one.
Water and a nutritive broth were added to them, and they were all placed in separate pots so that their development could be observed. Germination occurred in all samples up to 60 hours after planting, and initial development appeared normal. By the sixth day, differences began to be observed, with smaller roots in the plants that had sprouted in the lunar soil. After 20 days, the resulting cultures had their transcriptome analyzed.
Interestingly, the trio observed differences between plants grown with regolith from the Apollo 11 and 12 missions, which was older and underwent more interaction with the radiation present on the Moon, and those that used Apollo 17 soil, which was newer and less processed under the same conditions. lunar. This was reflected in the amount of stress-linked genes activated in each plant. But normal, normal, none of them stayed.
“These data suggest that more mature regolith provides a poorer substrate for plant growth than immature regolith,” the researchers wrote. “Therefore, although this study demonstrates that plants can use lunar regolith as a primary substrate, further characterization and optimization would be needed before regolith could be considered a routine in situ resource, particularly in sites where the regolith is highly mature.”
This column is published on Mondays, in Folha Corrida.
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