‘Space veggies’ grow in Dutch greenhouse

News

• Agricultural researchers at a Dutch university are growing vegetables in soils similar to those found on the Moon and Mars, looking for ways of helping space pioneers grow their own crops.

How did they manage to get the soil?

• NASA, the U.S. space agency made ground similar to that on the Moon from sand found in an Arizona desert, while Mars’ crimson “soil” was scooped from a volcano in Hawaii.

The major problem in growing ‘Space Veggies’

• Martian and lunar soil, including NASA’s own imitation, may contain heavy metals that are harmless to plants but could prove deadly to humans.
• If analyses show that the vegetables contain arsenic, mercury or iron making them unfit for human consumption, the soil can be purified by growing other plant species such as violets which absorb the poisons.