Researchers said on Thursday they have found a way to turn inhospitable lunar soil fertile by introducing bacteria that enhance the availability of phosphorus, an important plant nutrient. They performed experiments growing a relative of tobacco using simulated moon soil, more properly called lunar regolith, in a laboratory in China. In that study, Arabidopsis did grow, but not as robustly in the lunar soil as in volcanic ash from Earth used for comparative purposes, suggesting that lunar soil could use a little help to become more fertile. The study used simulated regolith rather than the real thing because genuine lunar soil, as one might imagine, is in short supply on Earth. "In contrast, our technique, which is a kind of in-situ resource utilization, applies microbial improvement to the lunar soil, making it more fertile and capable for plant cultivation," Xia added.

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Persons: Nicotiana, Yitong Xia, benthamiana, Xia, Will Dunham, Rosalba O'Brien Organizations: China Agricultural University, Reuters, REUTERS Acquire, Rights, Communications, NASA, Thomson Locations: Beijing, China, United States, China's Jilin Province