Scientists Have Successfully Grown the First Plants in Lunar Soil

University of Florida scientists have reached a "milestone in lunar and space exploration" by successfully growing plants in soil that was collected from the surface of the moon.

"In a new paper published in the journal 'Communications Biology,' University of Florida researchers showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil," the university says. "Their study also investigated how plants respond biologically to the moon’s soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from soil found on Earth."

The experiment proved difficult from the start. The University of Florida says its researchers asked NASA for this soil three times over the course of 11 years before they finally received "12 grams—just a few teaspoons—of lunar soil with which to do this experiment." That meant they could only fill a few "thimble-sized wells in plastic plates normally used to culture cells."

Plants did indeed grow in these itty-bitty "pots" of lunar soil with naught but water, essential nutrients, and sunlight. But the researchers note that the plants weren't exactly thriving in this extraterrestrial soil. The university says "some of the plants grown in the lunar soils were smaller, grew more slowly, or were more varied in size than their counterparts" in the control group.

"Our results show that growth is challenging; the lunar regolith plants were slow to develop and many showed severe stress morphologies," the researchers say in their Communications Biology article. "Moreover, all plants grown in lunar soils differentially expressed genes indicating ionic stresses, similar to plant reactions to salt, metal and reactive oxygen species."

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All of which is to say the researchers are eager to learn more about how Earth's plants handle lunar regolith. Here's to hoping it doesn't take another 11 years for them to get more samples.