Could Fungi Be the Missing Ingredient for Growing Food on Mars?

Automatically curated summary from The Debrief.

According to a review in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences led by Jéssica Carneiro Oliveira, beneficial terrestrial fungi could help solve nutrient deficiencies in lunar and Martian regolith. The authors suggest that fungi such as Trichoderma and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi could enhance crop growth by expanding plant root networks, mobilizing scarce nutrients, and mitigating environmental stress. However, these strategies remain theoretical and untested on actual extraterrestrial regolith, relying currently on synthetic substitutes. Future experiments using real lunar and Martian samples are necessary to determine if these fungal approaches will work in space.

Context and limitations

The proposed fungal methods have only been evaluated theoretically or with synthetic regolith substitutes, and have not yet been tested on actual lunar or Martian regolith samples.