Lunar living: bacteria could help grow plants on the Moon

Adding bacteria to lunar soil may help us live on the Moon, scientists say, after a new study combined three different bacteria on lunar soil to see how it would affect the growth of a plant. 

Researchers found that the three types of bacteria dramatically helped grow the plant - which was a relative of tobacco named Benth. The bacteria work by increasing the amount of a kind of phosphorus, a good source of nutrients, in the soil. 

The scientists put Benth seeds into lunar soil treated with three bacteria: B. mucilaginosus, B. megaterium, and P. fluorescens and let the plants grow as usual. They found those plants treated with the bacteria had 104% more chlorophyll than those that had been grown in another soil that only contained dead bacteria, had longer stems and roots after six days of growth, and were heavier and had wider clusters of leaves after 24 days.

The materials therefore “have great application value and prospects for future space exploration”, the researchers conclude, but care must be taken as introducing bacteria to alien soil could “pose a threat to human crews”.

Previous studies have shown growing cress is possible using lunar soil, but on the whole, the soil is worse than volcanic ash from our own planet to grow plants. However, lunar soil has less nitrogen, which is required to grow plants.

To establish a lunar base on the Moon, researchers need to find ways to grow plants, which requires improving the quality of the soil - and the trio of bacteria could be a key step in making this development. 

The work is described in a new paper, ‘Phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria improve the growth of Nicotiana benthamiana on lunar regolith simulant by dissociating insoluble inorganic phosphorus’ published in Communications Biology. It was conducted by Zhencai Sun and colleagues from the China Agricultural University in Beijing.