abiotic stress tagged posts

Mars fungi could make red planet regolith fertile for crops

Artist’s rendering of a greenhouse on Mars. (Credit: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC))

You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’ve been tasked with establishing the first self-sustaining food crop on a Martian settlement. You’re nervous because you’re using a new type of fungi called beneficial fungi, which you’re told will help enhance the Martian regolith, enabling it to be used for growing crops.

While growing crops on Mars using fungi might be decades away, this hasn’t stopped an international team of scientists from the United States and Brazil from pushing the limits of enhancing crop production through non-traditional methods.

With their findings published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, the researchers discuss how ...

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