Growing Food on Mars: Utilizing Earth's Hardiest Flora for Nutrient-Rich Soil

  • Thread starter Thread starter ZMacZ
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Mars
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
Sign up Log in
4 replies · 3K views
ZMacZ
Messages
21
Reaction score
1
As some people may know, the hardest thing to do is create a habitable environment on Mars.

Basic needs would be food, shelter and water.

Assume that water and shelter are already available (for the sake of this topic)

That leaves food..

Food crops could be grown on Mars, but after a while you'd have soil degradation.
The minerals and such would have been extracted from the soil in such a manner that any crop
would not be able to grow there any longer..

Now here's my questionaire:

Would it be possible to use Earth's hardiest flora, to gain any such materials from Mars' soil ?
(regular weeds, cacti and such )

The ingredients would be a handful of Earth soil, mixed in with a lot of Mars soil..
(micro-organisms) and water..
If the weeds would be able to extract any amount of nutrients from the Mars soil,
they could then be composted and used as fertilizer for the actual crops..

Now, is it possible, or is there any indication of Mars soil not being able to deliver
any such ingredients ?

Thanx..

Note: Assume the atmosphere would be CO2 enriched..as a by-product of the habitation
unit's CO2 'production'.
 
Biology news on Phys.org

Discussion

For starters, nutrient depletion in Martian soil would be minimal if the inhabitants recycled their sweat, urine, and 'night soil'. For example when you create pure water from urine, as is done on the ISS, you get a concentrated solution with potassium and nitrogen compounds that can act as a fertilizer (as long as you neutralize the basicity first).

As far as weeds being "able to extract any amount of nutrients from the Mars soil", you've got the wrong picture. Fungi are what typically break down large mineral structures into soluble minerals that can be absorbed by plants. There's all kinds of symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi for that express purpose. And yes, mixing Earth soil with Martian soil would probably do the trick to some degree. You could also mechanically crush the minerals to speed up the process even faster.

In sum, nutrient depletion in Martian soil is so far down the list of challenges that it's barely worth thinking about. Far higher on the list is finding or designing plants that can withstand the hard radiation on Mars' surface, or dealing with the problem that Martian soil is intrinsically toxic due to the high concentration of perchlorates.

https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals.html
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: jim mcnamara
@ZMacZ - google for 'Mars jar' - an old approach. As our understanding of Mars soils and atmosphere stands at the moment, there are no 'weeds' (mostly angiosperms, so-called flowering plants) from Earth that could grow on Mars. Extremophile Earth bacteria, maybe. It is also slightly possible that we may have already introduced some bacteria to Mars via some of our exploratory spacecraft .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile
A more pop Science take: https://news.nationalgeographic.com...a-alien-life-protection-humans-planets-space/
 
In a closed ecosystem nutrients can't disappear, they are recycled,
Water and CO2 might be exchanged with the external environment, but Nitrogen compounds and other essential nutrients such as Phosphorus should be fully recoverable,
As far as I know, the dust on the surface of Mars has very little in it which would be a useful fertilizer or soil improvement.
Iron Oxides and other metal compounds with a lot of Chlorine in it. yuck.
 
Last edited: