Working with UK tea plantation, Dartmoor Tea, Lightcurve Films and Europlanet, Kent researchers (led by Professor Nigel Mason and Dr Sara Lopez-Gomollon) planted saplings into soils that mimic those found on the surface of the Moon and Mars.
They monitored how the plants develop over the course of several weeks – comparing their performance with a control sample planted in Devonian soil – with temperature, humidity and lighting controlled to mimic conditions in space.
The tea plants in lunar soil flourished, taking root and growing as well as the control. In contrast, plants in simulated Martian soil failed to grow.
Details of soil moisture, nutrient content, pH, root length and leaf health were explored by project students
Anna-Maria Wirth and Florence Grant. The project team will be reporting the findings at Europe’s first space agriculture workshop in Bratislava, Slovakia.
This research project came about after Maarten Roos-Serote from Lightcurve Films learned about the space-agriculture activities at Kent’s School of Natural Sciences at last year’s European Planetary Science Congress.
Maarten, who is a freelance Planetary Scientist, had begun experimenting with tea-plants a few years ago in Portugal to establish baseline growth parameters under usual Earth-like conditions.
After identifying and building a relationship with Jo Harper at Dartmoor Tea, the British tea grower’s plants were utilised for the University of Kent experiment.
Professor Nigel Mason said: “We’re moving into a new age of space, where we think about
settling in space and building bases on the Moon or Mars. One of the first things you want to know is, ‘what will people eat?’.
“These experiments reveal that terrestrial plants such as tea may be cultivated in lunar soils within lunar greenhouses, allowing inhabitants of such bases some degree of autonomy and access to fresh food.
“We are at the very earliest stages of research into space agriculture, but it is reassuring that we may be able to provide access to the great British tradition of a tea break.”
The experiment has also had implications closer to home. While the main aim of the project has been to see whether we could grow plants on the Moon
(and Mars), the research team is also learning about how crops and plants survive harsh environments and poor soils.
Poor soils are an international problem with climate change, and over-farming and this work can help scientists better understand how to transform sterile, lifeless soils into viable growing ones.
Dr Sara Lopez-Gomollon said: “The results of this project are very encouraging, as they demonstrate that a tea, a crop, can be grown in lunar soils.
“Our next step is to better understand the physiology of the plant under these conditions, so we can improve growth and ideally translate these findings to other crops.
“This is particularly exciting as we move beyond simply sending astronauts to the Moon and begin to
think seriously about making it habitable, paving the way for long-duration space missions.
“Additionally, just as our experience with how plants cope with stress on Earth informs our work in space agriculture, we hope that the knowledge gained from studying plant survival in extreme extra-terrestrial environments will also be applied to improving crop resilience here on Earth.”
“The team at Dartmoor Estate Tea have been delighted to be involved in this study. We hope that our experience of establishing the cultivation of tea in an unconventional setting has assisted this project,” Jo Harper from Dartmoor Tea said.
“Outcomes from the implementation of the trial phase have already led to direct improvements in the way we grow and nurture our plants here in Devon, with the potential for these to have applications benefiting the wider tea industry.”