Gene-edited rice will fill the bellies of the first Martians, according to a new study.
Brave Red Planet colonisers will rely on the simple cereal crop, genetically mutated to cope with the challenging conditions 260,000,000 km from Earth.
Perchlorate salts, detected in the distant planet’s soil, are generally considered to be toxic for plants and pose a major barrier to life there.
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Peter James Gann, a doctoral student in cell and molecular biology, has been working with Dr Abhilash Ramachandran at the University of Arkansas to look into the problem and experiment with different types of rice.
The pair used "Martian" soil, a basaltic rich soil mined from the Mojave Desert, known as Mojave Mars Simulant (MMS), to put rice to the test.
They grew one wild-type and two gene-edited lines of rice with genetic mutations that better enable them to respond to stress, such as drought, sugar starvation or salinity.
These varieties were grown in the MMS, as well as a regular potted mix and a hybrid of the two.
While plants were able to grow in the Martian simulant, they were not as developed as those grown in the potting soil and hybrid mix.
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Replacing just a quarter of the Martian simulant with potting soil resulted in improved development.
The team also experimented with the amount of perchlorate in the soil, finding that 3 grams per kilo was the threshold beyond which nothing would grow, while mutant strains could still root in 1 gram per kilo.
Their findings, presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, suggest that there might be a way forward for different genetically modified rice to be grown in Martian soil.
The pair plan to continue their experiment with a newer Martian soil simulant called the Mars Global Simulant, other rice strains and a Mars simulation chamber.
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