Geekery: Let’s Science the Sh*t Out Of This
This real life Mark Watney needs your help to make plants grown in Martian soil edible…
Wieger Wamelink is a plant ecologist with the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. While NASA, Mars-One, and Elon Musk have been working on how to get humans to Mars Dr. Wamelink has been tackling another large issue: how are we going to feed people once we get there?
He and his team have successfully grown tomatoes, peas, radish, spinach, and other crops in simulated Martian and lunar soil. The successful plants are grown in trays of a mix of simulated soil, organic material (grass clippings), and manure. The harvest is comparable to what they’ve grown in a control.
Next up is making this harvest safe to eat. Both lunar and Martian soil contain heavy metals like lead, cadmium and arsenic that make anything grown in them toxic to humans. Dr. Wamelink and his team aim to find a solution for this – and apply what they learn to things that are helpful back home like cleaning contaminated soil with plants and being able to grow crops in harsh environments.
Creating and protecting our food source is a worthy undertaking, and an important one. Help get these folks €25,000 to science the sh*t out of this project…
For more information, and to donate, check out their crowdfunding site!
