Experiments Show Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar (With Lots of Help) (science.org) 92
sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: In The Martian, fictional astronaut Mark Watney survives the wasteland of Mars by growing potatoes in lunar soil -- with a bit of help from human poop. The idea may not be so far-fetched. In a preprint posted this month on bioRxiv, researchers show potatoes can indeed grow in the equivalent of Moon dust, though they need a lot of help from compost found on Earth. To make the discovery, scientists first had to re-create lunar regolith -- the loose, powdery layer that blankets the Moon's surface. To replicate that in the lab, David Handy, a space biologist at Oregon State University (OSU), and his colleagues used a mix of crushed minerals and volcanic ash that matched the chemistry of the Moon.
But lunar regolith is entirely devoid of the organic matter that plants need to grow. "Turning an inorganic, inhospitable bucket of glorified sand into something that can support plant growth is complex," says Anna-Lisa Paul, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Florida not involved with the work. So Handy and his colleagues added vermicompost -- organic waste from worms -- into the regolith. They found that a mix with 5% compost allowed the potatoes to grow while still emulating the stressful conditions of the lunar environment. After almost 2 months of growth, the team harvested the tubers, freeze-dried them, and ground them up for further testing.
Analysis of the potatoes' DNA showed stress-related genes had been activated. The potatoes also had higher concentrations of copper and zinc than Earth-grown ones, which may make them dangerous for human consumption. The plants' nutritional value, though, was similar to traditional potatoes -- a surprise to the scientists, who expected lower levels of nutrition "because the plants might have been working overtime to overcome certain stressors," Handy says.
But lunar regolith is entirely devoid of the organic matter that plants need to grow. "Turning an inorganic, inhospitable bucket of glorified sand into something that can support plant growth is complex," says Anna-Lisa Paul, a plant molecular biologist at the University of Florida not involved with the work. So Handy and his colleagues added vermicompost -- organic waste from worms -- into the regolith. They found that a mix with 5% compost allowed the potatoes to grow while still emulating the stressful conditions of the lunar environment. After almost 2 months of growth, the team harvested the tubers, freeze-dried them, and ground them up for further testing.
Analysis of the potatoes' DNA showed stress-related genes had been activated. The potatoes also had higher concentrations of copper and zinc than Earth-grown ones, which may make them dangerous for human consumption. The plants' nutritional value, though, was similar to traditional potatoes -- a surprise to the scientists, who expected lower levels of nutrition "because the plants might have been working overtime to overcome certain stressors," Handy says.
Lunar soil (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought he planted potatoes in Martian soil, but I guess I was mistaken.
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Coherence is hard when you rely on AI to write your articles.
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NO. Perchlorates in Martian *dirt* (not soil) will kill pretty much anything you want to grow. Mars is a superfund site.
Re: Lunar soil (Score:4, Insightful)
All of these (endless) studies are so stupid. Someone buys a "lunar soil simulant" or "martian soil simulant", grows something in it, and writes a paper. But these simulants are *not* the same thing. They're designed to match (very roughly!) in terms of bulk elemental composition and grain size, but not *chemical* composition, nor trace elements, or even grain texture. For example, you're not going to find perchlorates or whatnot in them.
I mean, congrats dude, you've shown you can grow potatoes in Hawaiian volcanic ash. Stop the presses.
And what's even the point? At best you're showing "I took something inorganic and grew plants in it". That's literally the definition of hydroponics. You can grow plants in a pot ground up plastic Elvis dolls -what exactly is the point? The only thing you could prove is what e.g. perchlorates, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, sharp grains, etc do to plants - *but they're not testing that*.
And he's not even testing hydroponics anyway - if you're mixing it with organics, then you're just using volcanic ash as a soil amendment. Your average ancient Roman farmer could have told you that works.
Lastly, the "potato farming" bit of The Martian was mind-bogglingly stupid tripe, even by that book's low standards.
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So you're saying that we shouldn't even bother with "close" unless we can fly some potatoes and worm shit to Mars for real?
Never heard of "crawl, walk, THEN run" ?
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I thought he planted potatoes in Martian soil, but I guess I was mistaken.
And I've always had a (pedantic) gripe about a related scene in the film, specifically this bit:
“One big bonus of this NASA communication: Email! ... One of them was from my alma mater, the University of Chicago. They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially “colonized” it. So technically, I colonized Mars. In your face , Neil Armstrong!”
Technically, he colonized the HAB, using some martian soil.
Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar (Score:5, Insightful)
Experiments Show Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar
I'm not a flat-earther, I'm not a moon hoaxer, but this headline really confused me.
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Artificial light is already used for earth farming in some cases. But, to make use of the summary's "Solar" typo, I wonder if plants could also grow under the 28-day day cycle of the moon. If they could grow on 14 days of continuous light (artificial or not) and 14 days of darkness, then it would be easier to provide light for such a farm, either with natural sunlight, or via PV, without needing batteries or long power transmission cables.
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Experiments Show Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar
I'm not a flat-earther, I'm not a moon hoaxer, but this headline really confused me.
Uh, speaking of confused, the hell is a “moon hoaxer”?
Are there those who think that’s just a huge light bulb? Do the old-timers remember the hard times going to school, dark and bright both ways, long before we installed a dimmer switch on it?
I mean seriously. It’s right there. Hanging in the sky, showing itself in a quite explicable manner given what we knew a century or two ago.
Dare I ask if there are solar skeptics too, looking for the microwave brand name always hiding itself
Re: Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar (Score:4, Funny)
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I think he means Moon Landing Hoaxer.
Although there maybe a subset of Flat-Earthers that believe that the moon is a crescent shaped piece if cheese and we are on a dish sitting on the back of turtles all the way down...
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I see you've fallen for the myth that the moon is real.
That's just propaganda pushed by Big Regolith.
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in cahoots with Big Cheese
who are strangely run by the Big Kahuna for some reason
anyway it's not very appetizing because it's too cold up there in space, that's why they're pretending it's lithic
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Uh, speaking of confused, the hell is a “moon hoaxer”?
As others have noted, this likely refers to moon landing hoaxers. But there are those that think the moon is artificial. :-)
Hollow Moon on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Recent movie Moonfall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They're fun theories at least
Re: Potatoes Can Survive In Lunar Solar (Score:2)
What's really going to confuse you is when you find out they're talking about mars.
Lunar Solar? (Score:2)
Maybe it's lunar soil?
Re:Lunar Solar? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's lunar soil?
The summary is night soil and it’s leaking.
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There is lunar dirt (ground up minerals). No such thing as lunar soil though (an ecosystem in the regolith).
Artemis III (Score:2)
Re: Artemis III (Score:1)
NOT LUNAR SOIL (Score:4, Insightful)
"...They found that a mix with 5% compost ..."
So not lunar soil then. From the article, the "lunar regolith is entirely devoid of the organic matter", so where does this "5% compost" come from? All they need to do is import farm land from earth.
"So Handy and his colleagues added vermicompost -- organic waste from worms -- into the regolith."
They added organic matter to lunar soil that CANNOT be made from materials on the moon.
"...researchers show potatoes can indeed grow in the equivalent of Moon dust, though they need a lot of help from compost found on Earth."
NO THEY DIDN'T. They showed that potatoes do NOT grow in "Moon dust", that imported soil from the Earth is required.
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If that were true, then the potatoes wouldn't have had dangerous levels of copper. So it's not true, it's just truish. Using glass pellets would have been safer, but that would mean you needed to transport the glass.
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Re:NOT LUNAR SOIL (Score:4, Informative)
Is this a case of extreme reading comprehension failure? Here, let me "translate" the summary then:
"Scientists found that we can plant potatoes on the Moon by shipping, with rockets, 1 pound of compost for every 50 pounds of lunar soil we want to use for planting potatoes, and those moon-planted potatoes will be nutritious enough to feed moon colonists. One problem though is that moon-planted potatoes will have more metals than is safe for human consumption, so further research is needed to fix that."
Is that clearer?
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This is more a testament to the snake oil that super foods actually are than on the nutritional value of the humble Solanum tuberosum.
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Then we might call this progress beyond McMoon fries.
Well, yes, we certainly can make potatoes a lot less healthy by shoving them in a vat of vegetable oil and cooking it at high heat for a lovely combo of unhealthy fats, as well as boiling out as much v
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Grow an actual superfood in lunar soil justifying...
Let me get this straight: unless scientists go straight to the cure of all cancers plus eternal youth provided in a single pill you take once for $1, all medical research is useless. After all, one must never, ever, start small, with an easier, achievable, controllable target, and improve iteratively upon it to develop better knowledge, better tools, better techniques, slowly developing a new bioengineering field, no sir! It's either absolute perfection right this very instant, or not at all!!!
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So you replaced the "greater than and equal to" to symbols with "less than" symbols and switch the terms. How clever of you. Have an informative upvote. You've really helped the people who didn't get through grade school.
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The point is that you only need to bring 5% from Earth, which is important when you are weight and volume constrained. Or to put it another way, using lunar regolith to bulk up the compost, you can increase the area available to grow potatoes by a factor of 20.
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I did the calculations, I think you would need about 35m3 at an absolute minimum.
But that's if you want a year's worth of food, and people won't be there for a whole year, or if they are they will be getting some supplies from Earth.
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NOT that it matters. To Marketing. (Score:2)
Do not worry my friend.
If you think THAT is quite the stretch, there will be a lot of narcissists back on Earth dumb enough to buy the new Ultimate compost being sold with “moon dust” contained within, at the price of $10, 000 a pound.
(Keep in mind that “moon dust” is ironically powdered bullshit. Call it the ba dum tiss part of the marketing.)
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So not lunar soil then. From the article, the "lunar regolith is entirely devoid of the organic matter", so where does this "5% compost" come from?
An asshole.
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It's more complicated than that. Shit is too...intense...for decent compost. Of course, toilet paper would help.
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Shit is too...intense...for decent compost
Shit is hot, but if you're mixing it with dirt with no organic components, that's going to cool it down fast. Also, the one and only thing you need to add to shit to make primo compost is time, although agitation will reduce even that requirement. A bason toilet will turn human shit into safe, usable soil in less than six months with a stir every couple of weeks. Ideally you would throw some other greens in there as well, as they help migration of air and liquids, but they're not required.
We're putting chic
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It comes from poop. Like, from a butt.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/c... [penny-arcade.com]
Re:NOT LUNAR SOIL (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a similar, but more informative article about growing Chickpeas on 75% moon soil [sciencedaily.com].
These articles bring up interesting questions about circular farming. What would it take to build a closed ecosystem on the moon that does not require continuously shipping nutrients from earth?
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One thing it would take is continued effort over time. Probably decades. These note are just part of the "how do you get it started" series.
Mars, Moon, Solar, Soil (Score:3)
AI slop feeds into AI, poisons the web and eats real resources. Turn off the servers, it's over.
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Fun Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
So by a certain reckoning, earthworms are an invasive species [wikipedia.org]!
Re: Fun Fact (Score:4, Informative)
So the breadbaskets of the original 13 colonies, not to mention all of Spanish North America, were in areas that did have worms.
Now, the invasive European worms did end up outcompeting the native worms, so even in many of the areas that had them, you are more likely to find the European variety today, but there are still areas even in the U.S. where native species predominate
https://www.biorxiv.org/conten... [biorxiv.org]
Potential dangers (Score:3)
While we haven't studied Martian soil as much as lunar soil, if they are similar, the soil itself can hold health hazards that adding a little compost won't solve.
The soil carries an electrical charge and clings to spacesuits. People (on Earth) who worked inside returned lunar space capsules experienced allergy-like symptoms. I seem to recall that much lunar soil particles have very sharp edges and can affect your lungs.
Not sure what characteristics would be transferred from the Martian soil to a vegetable. How would our bodies react to that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The perchlorates are a serious sticking issue. While I continue to be amazed at human ingenuity, the remediation problem for Martian soil seems to be very difficult. Not only that, but the perchlorates are *everywhere*, which means the entire environment is fundamentally poisonous to humans. That doesn't make it impossible, but it raises the bar another notch where we are already potentially dealing with low atmospheric pressure, extremely high CO2 concentration, very low O2 concentration, serious cold,
Re: Potential dangers (Score:3)
I'm not so sure that perchlorates are such an awful sticking point.
(This is not meant to be a post in support of this study, mind. Please do not infer that it is.)
Perchlorates are a 'potentially useful' chemical salt, that form from slow dehydration and UV exposure in an oxygen rich envirionment. They contain a lot of chemically bound oxygen, that is relatively easy to liberate, producing reactive oxygen species when that happens.
Numerous findings of water ice have been made on Mars, which means it can be c
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Saying we'll get oxygen from the 0,5-1% of a poison in martian regolith, rather than bulk ice or CO2, is...
Well, it's take ;)
There is no reason to celebrate the existence of perchlorates on Mars. Also, I have no idea where you got the idea that perchlorates break down in water. Perchlorates are highly stable in water. Unusually stable relative to their high oxidation potential. It takes a lot of activation energy to break the chlorine-oxygen bonds. Which is how perchlorates long-term contaminate aquifer
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I am not interested in an an argumentative tit for tat Rei.
Perchlorates can be broken down through bacterial processes in water (but assumes you have the other things you need for life, which we dont here. Then again, I am open to nitrogen sources existing, but being undocumented. If they do, this by far the least expensive means), and through electrolysis with a boron doped diamond electrode set.
Which just so happens that this latter is also be your preferred method, since it breaks the water as well. The
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I literally have a BA in horticulture. Regolith is NOT a good choice for hydroponics. Period. Stop trying to pretend it is one. Also, regolith has nothing to do with "shales", and it's not clay minerals either.
The closest thing to industrial hydroponics with it is using it to make rock wool (if the elemental composition is correct) - but you can also use, you know, rocks for that. Rock wool (basalt fibre) is basically air blown / centrifugally-flung lava (artificial Pele's hair) that has been spun. Rock
Re: Potential dangers (Score:2)
Rei, it's always this way with you. Take the chip off your shoulder.
Firstly, I see you have this notion that martian rocks must all be igneous. This is not correct. That planet has had extensive geologic hydrolysis. Noteworthy shale formations have been found at Jezero and Gale.
https://news.mit.edu/2024/stud... [mit.edu]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.... [wiley.com]
The generalized composition profile for windblown dust is very high in basaltic minerals, but many noteworthy sedimentary-dominated structures have been catalogued, as
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You're not talking about rock, you're talking about regolith.
Depending on where the regolith is sourced
Regolith is not "sourced", it's blown across the whole planet. It's not simply "whatever the underlying strata is made out of".
But, since we are playing 'name the ignorance' in this exchange, your attestation stat perchlorate is 0.5% liberatable oxygen says 'Say i'm ignorant of basic chemistry without saying i'm ignorant of basic c
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I came here to look for this and add it if I didn't find it.
Lunar "soil" is essentially neutral, just needs some additives. Conversely, Martian "soil" is actually poisonous. Additives alone aren't sufficient to get things to grow in it, you need to remove the poisonous parts first.
Net: It's easier to grow plants in lunar rather than Martian "soil".
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That's not clear. "Poison" is too broad a term. In both cases the question is "What do you need to do to make it usable?". The two cases are different, so the answers are going to be different, but one is not necessarily harder than the other. E.g. too much salt is poisonous, and so is too much water (people have died from drinking too much water), but both can be handled merely by proper dilution...however you don't dilute them with the same media.
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While we haven't studied Martian soil as much as lunar soil
What are you talking about? We've already sent Matt Damon up to test this. He survived for months on potatoes he grew himself on Mars. I saw it in a documentary. /s
But will McD's fries work in space? (Score:1)
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Lucky for us, it's already been studied in depth: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
The present work examines potato frying in hot oil during the short duration low gravity conditions achieved in a Parabolic Flight Campaign organized by the European Space Agency. An innovative device has been constructed, allowing the simultaneous observation of bubbles dynamics above the potato surface and the thermal behavior inside the potato flesh. It is seen that even in the absence of buoyancy i.e., during parabolas, v
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CowboyNeal would never have approved this (Score:2)
Content has really gone downhill lately.
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The only thing that matters is: Will we argue about whatever it is, producing more pages, and page views.
Content is king and we are producing it.
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But why? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's good that they do these experiments, as it shows risks regarding heavy metal toxicity.
Vermicompost obviously contains lots of earth microorganisms that live in symbiosis ("living together") with plants here on earth - getting nutrients from plants (mostly carbs produced via photosynthesis, light not being available under the soil) and also supplying nutrients (nitrogen, minerals etc. from inert soil, converted to a bio-available form that plants can utilize) and even water. No surprise here, foodweb is a known concept by now with many people interested in this.
But I don't know that it would be the most practical to ship vermicompost from earth in large and continuing quantities. It might be better to initially ship the earthworms themselves (or at least their eggs) as well as (organic) foodstuffs for the humans there. This could then serve to ramp up a growing population of earthworms on the moon. Should be obvious though that this will be in a sheltered environment, not on the exposed raw lunar surface - like with earth-origin humans and their earth-origin-crop plants. This would be a live ecosystem being constructed from the ground up, protected from a hostile environment - not inert or sterilized materials.
Having a colony of earthworms would allow the setup of a vermiponics system (~"aquaponics" using worm casting nutrients instead of dissolved salts) for growing food plants, using some inert substrate for a physical support structure for the plants - no dependence on a possibly toxic growth medium. Potatoes and other root crops are successfully grown here on earth, together with the customary leaf and fruit crops. After the food has been eaten and the waste passed out again, the worms can come into play again, to convert this back into compost, as has been done successfully here on earth with multiple wet or dry vermicomposting toilet systems.
One drawback with vermicomposting is the amount of time it may take - much less of a problem here on earth if you've got some space and a friendly environment. (This [vermicompo...oilets.net] is one site I found via websearch that was quite interesting regarding construction, ramp-up and maintenance here on earth, gives some feel of what could be possible.)
Ironic that these little miracle workers considered for the moon are named "earth"worms.
I'm interested how the difference in gravity would influence them.
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Creating vermicompost on the moon may be close to impossible, so importing it would always be necessary.
The physical difference in regolith from earths soil is that it is unweathered and has very sharp shards and edges that would literally tear up the internals of any worms that might try to ingest it. Without the worms there would be no future vermicompost, so the system can not be self sustainable unless they first process the regolith to remove all the microscopic sharp edges.
I can envision large indus
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Creating vermicompost on the moon may be close to impossible, so importing it would always be necessary.
The physical difference in regolith from earths soil is that it is unweathered and has very sharp shards and edges that would literally tear up the internals of any worms that might try to ingest it. Without the worms there would be no future vermicompost, so the system can not be self sustainable unless they first process the regolith to remove all the microscopic sharp edges.
You seem to be not too familiar with earthworm farming, but fact they DON'T need soil (or regolith) where they are living, breeding, digesting, and producing castings (= "worm poop"). And you don't need the worms present when you harvest the castings to transfer to your growing medium - the microorganisms in the castings is what you are after, and they do the symbiotic work with the plants (as with the humus from the original article). In fact, the typical earthworm species (Eisenia foetedia) that is most
LUNAR SOLAR (Score:2)
Martian vs Lunar; neither works (Score:3)
As fun as the Martian is, and as scientifically accurate it is supposed to be, growing potatoes in Martian soil is one thing that definitely was an artistic liberty. All of the Martian soil we've looked at so far has been highly toxic to humans and plants. Even just physical exposure would be poisonous, to say nothing of trying to grow plants.
Moon soil, near as we can tell, is not toxic in the same chemical way. However it's still incredibly hazardous to human health, in some ways more than Martian soil. Without an atmosphere to weather the soil particles, Moon dust is incredibly sharp and jagged. It definitely is harmful to human lungs, much like asbestos is. Further, experiments in growing plants in real lunar regolith, showed they began having problems and became stunted, partly because the particles physically damaged the roots.
Maybe the experiment authors should retry their experiment with 100% asbestos and get back to us. Otherwise all they've shown is that you can add organic matter to earth sand and grow things.
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100%!
With the caveat that I'd not say lunar regolith is"like asbestos". Asbestos is unusually hazardous because it splits mainly along its long axis, so its fibres tend to get thinner and thinner over time (unlike, say, glass or carbon fibre, which tend to split transverse across the fibre). This turns asbestos into tiny needles that make it deep into the lungs, immune cells try to engulf them, fail and die, and then trigger an immune cascade in response. It's also not really the same as classic silicosis
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OTOH, when used as soil for growing plants, it would be being continually exposed to moisture and atmosphere.
Seems like a wasted effort (Score:2)
They're testing lunar regolith simulant as a bulking agent and seeing if the chemicals that are available from the simulant affect plant growth... except this was done in 1970 to see if the regolith was toxic, and a more advanced experiment done in 2022 by the University of Florida.
So I guess OSU's big announcement is they confirmed the Florida results from four years ago? That's actually still potentially good science if it hasn't already been done, but it's not new, groundbreaking stuff.
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However I don't remember the Florida experiment reporting dangerous amounts of heavy metals. That's going to need to be considered.
Just not ... (Score:2)
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I've never read it. Does he have three robot daughters?
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My money's on the Crushinator
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YOO-HOO
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Me too. Classic story. And they spend a lot of time on the idea of grinding up rocks to make powder and then adding cow dung to get it grow things. Of course they have an artificial atmosphere on Ganymede also, and a "heat dome" to keep the heat in. Fantastic story. Juvenile Fictions, but hard sci fi at the same time.
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Also the notion of a reconfigurable ship, not unlike the shop on the Hail Mary Project. Configured one way for acceleration phase, then another way for centripedal gravity, and then back to acceleration (deceleration) for arrival. Heinlein thought a lot of it out!
Pedantry Alert (Score:3)
How can the poster make such a ridiculous OBVIOUS mistake? Makes the pedantic 90% of my brain seethe. "the loose, powdery layer that blankets the Moon's surface" The lunar soil is NOT "powdery." It sharp and pointy like crystals or shards of glass. To be "powdery" would require some way to grind it (eg water), which the moon has never had. Now it is quite possible, and would be required, to grind the soil before using it to grow plants, but damn it, who with any scientific knowledge does not know this?
Recommended moon setting book (nothing to do with grinding lunar soil): "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". And of course "The Menace from Earth."
We like the moon! (Score:2)
'cause it is close to us.
Sent a letter to the editors - couldn't let it go (Score:2)
This is just nuts! In today's age of sloppy journalism, this is pretty sloppy. How did a science author, science editor, or anyone at Science not catch such a blatant mistake. I get wanting to use The Martian as a relatable element but that doesn't mean you have to get basic facts wrong.
Growing Mars potatoes in lunar soil :o (Score:2)
No, he used Martian soil.