As is known, to conduct a full-fledged agriculture used the soil should be composed of a wide range of minerals and organic substances. Despite the fact that the Martian soil contains many different minerals, it lacks the second vital ingredient — organics. To ensure that future earth colonists could begin to lead a rather troublesome process of growing plants on the rusty surface of another planet, scientists have invented a new method of enrichment of the Martian soil, according to the portal . For example, human urine may be an excellent fertilizer, available to any researcher alien world.
A Curious humanity has undertaken many attempts of growing plants in simulated the extremely harsh conditions that exist on other planets. In 2016, scientists from the Netherlands have taken the first steps in the cultivation of food plants in the simulations as the lunar and Martian soils. That's when experts from the University of Wageningen found that although the plants are planted they truly feel good only in the earth's soils, their condition significantly improved after used the soil add fertilizer of freshly cut grass.
Unfortunately, it is not known for its lush lawns and growing flowers and herbs in the Martian greenhouse would require the presence of large amounts of liquid water and free space. Knowing this, researchers recently drew attention to the struvite – one of the phosphate minerals derived from human urine in modern wastewater treatment plants.
will Mars one day be green?
In the course of conducting a series of greenhouse tests, the researchers planted the bean seeds 60 different pots, which were filled with either soil-a simulation of lunar or Martian soil, or ordinary earth soil for flowering plants. Half of the pots also contain up to 15 grams of struvite, while others did not have any essential fertilizer. In addition, in the course of the experiment, all experimental plants were automatically irrigated with the same temperature conditions in a specially designed greenhouse.
As the germination of seeds, the scientists controlled their future growth rate. Scientists noted that all struvite fertilized plants showed the most striking indicators of development, with a fairly large margin could grow those plants that grows on the lunar and terrestrial soils.
plants are fertilized struvite, in the end also gave a good crop of beans, though, and made it a week later compared to the rest. However, researchers are confident that the performance and the speed of their growth can be greatly increased if in combination with struvite use fertilizer derived from human feces. Such a solution has already been used by the protagonist of the film ”the Martian” by Ridley Scott, and, perhaps, suggested by the writers of the movie idea, could really help to solve the problem of providing future Martian astronauts at least at the very beginning of our presence on the planet.
Anyway, in the future Mars colony could think of and more practical ways of growing crops. Or, perhaps, once we abandon them altogether? In the pages of Hi-News we already wrote about the fact that the next generation of earthlings will be able to use or a full (almost) .
Human urine can be a wonderful alternative to fertilizers for the enrichment of the Martian soil
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