We are all aware that potatoes can be grown easily on mars and even seen it in the movie ‘The Martian’ isn’t it. But, here’s what researchers at the Czech laboratory are upto in the labs opened especially to experiment what all can be grown on Mars in extreme conditions and without availability of water.
A 29 year old scientist Jan Lukacevic at the Prague University of Life Sciences carried out the experiment ‘Marsonaut’’ to study based on aeroponics viz. growing plants without soil in air and with minimum use of water.
The plants grow little differently from a vertical unit in a stacked position to save space. The researchers tried changing the light and temperature in the experiment and boy they’ve succeeded already.
They have already grown plants like mustard, radish, herbs like basil and mint as well as salad leaves. They had their harvest a week back and even tasted it.
As per Lukacevic the harvest was tasty because they were grown in a controlled environment proper supply of nutrients.
The next on their list are strawberries. The research is beneficial to all in a way it allows you to use minimum water and also saves a lot of horizontal space. Hence, it could not only be a boon to cultivating food on Mars in the coming times but even on earth because urbanization has anyways taken up most of the land and the available space as well as water is sparse.
The process of growing plants in air without the use of soil and little use of water is known as Aeroponics. It is closely connected to the process of hydroponics, is the method of growing plants in sand gravel or water without the use of soil under LED lights.
Now, with experiments already on for growing food on Mars, and preparations of forming colonies on Mars already on, the road to Mars seems to be getting easier and easier even though the temperatures on the red planet seem be go as low as -102 degress as per NASA reports.
*Sourced from Internet
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