A study identifies a plant capable of growing on Mars

 Once we have overcome all the challenges involved in getting to Mars, we will then have to figure out how to make life sustainable there, and growing crops will be a major part of that. And it will require a lot of research, given the high levels of salts and minerals, which make most plants struggle to survive on the Red Planet.

And a recent study published on the “Plus One” magazine website and supervised by a number of scientists from many universities found that the alfalfa plant will be able to survive in the volcanic Martian soil, and can be used as a fertilizer for growing foods such as turnip, radish and lettuce.

"The low nutrient content of Mars soil and high salinity make it unsuitable for crop growth, so it is necessary to develop strategies to enhance the nutrient content of the Red Planet's soil and desalinate brine for long-duration missions," the researchers said.

Getting an exact match with the soil on Mars is tricky, but the researchers put their best approximation before testing the different seeds in it, and found that alfalfa was able to grow as well as it does in Earth's soil, without any additional fertilizer.

The imitation Martian regolith was then tested with alfalfa as a fertilizer for plants such as turnips, radishes and lettuce, three plants that require little maintenance, grow quickly and do not need much water, and have all been successfully cultivated.

As for the problem of the need for fresh water, the team of researchers believes that the salt water available on Mars can be treated with a type of marine bacteria and then filtered through volcanic rocks to produce the water needed for the growth of  crops

There are still many questions to be answered, especially since when we finally reach the Red Planet, the regolith will not be quite as we assumed it would be, as the soil that the researchers designed, in an attempt to simulate the soil of Mars, was missing some of the salts of perchlorate, Which will need to be washed somehow from the Martian soil by desalinated water.

However, the experiments described in this study give scientists and astronauts some promising options for exploration. To be sure, growing alfalfa on Mars for fertilizer would cost less than transporting huge refrigerators of food over millions of kilometers to the Red Planet.