May 13: For the first time, scientists have grown plants in lunar soil using samples collected during Apollo missions to the moon.
According to CNN, this is the first time plants have been sprouted and grown on Earth in soil from another celestial body. The study would become the foundation for growing plants supplying oxygen and food on the moon. However, the experiments have revealed the problems being faced by the plants to grow in lunar regolith as the soil if very different from the natural habitats on Earth.
The study was published on Thursday in the journal Communications Biology. Different types of plants, including food crops, were brought on the space shuttle. The plant samples have also been used to prove that lunar samples were not harmful to life on Earth.
Study coauthor Anna-Lisa Paul, research professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, “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.
