🖖 Roots on the Moon

I can’t think of a better suited acronym than this. 

Scheduled for 2026, the Artemis III mission will be the first crewed lunar landing since 1972.

One of their experiments will be studying how crops grow on the Moon.

It’s called the Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora. Or the LEAF program.

Which crops, you ask?

Excellent question.

They’ll be experimenting with:

• rapeseed (Brassica papa)

• duckweed (Wolffia)

• and thale cress (Arbidopsis thaliana)

I find it fascinating that they’re studying duckweed.

Duckweed grows fast in dense clusters on the surface of water. It’s a potential source of human nutrition.

When freeze-dried it contains

• 20-30% protein

• ~25% fibre

• and 10-20% starch

We couldn’t make salads out of it, but it would make a nutritious supplement to meals and drinks. You can blend it into smoothies or mix it into a salad or sauce.

Other than feeding humans, it’s also fish food.

Several aquaponics farmers grow duckweed right in their fish tanks so that the fish can feed themselves. It closes the loop even further since additional food doesn’t have to be added regularly to the tank.

I wonder if my suspicions will be proven true that aquaponics would be a more viable solution for feeding our extraterrestrial colonists.

We’ll see.

LEAF goals

After growing the plants on the Moon— I think I’ll stick to its original name, Luna— the seedlings will be studied to see what effects being out there had on them.

Microgravity, radiation, water usage, CO₂ and oxygen limits in confined environments are constant issues in space.

NASA has been sending up crops to space since the 50s. China’s Chang’e 4 mission sprouted seeds on Luna back in 2019.

We must continue to do so as our instruments and techniques improve.

Certain plants flourished in microgravity. Others didn’t react well to confined places.

Not all plants tested over the years survived and we need to know why. We need to test which plants can and cannot grow out there.

That’s the goal of the LEAF program.

You and I might take plants for granted because for us they’re just… lunch.

We forget that plants are the way they are because they’ve evolved on planet Earth which has a specific size and a specific gravity orbiting a specific distance away from a specific-temperature star for the last 4.5 billion years.

Now out of nowhere, we’re moving them out of their routine.

With programs like LEAF we can see what changes will happen to the plants we’re going to eat. 

Will they grow shorter?

Will the lignin in the stems grow weaker since it’s not fighting the 9.8m/s² of Earth’s gravity?

Which genes will turn off/on before being passed to the next generation?

Will they survive?

We’re going to be responsible for the evolution of new species of plants. They’ll be the same as their Earthly ancestors. But adapted to a new environment.

How cool is that?