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Now, some people might dream of getting the chance to
live in a Martian colony. Others might find that a nightmare.
But everyone’s probably worried about the food they’d
have to eat. In Sci-Fi movies,
space colonists usually have to eat some shelf-stable protein bars or food pellets.
But what if they want, like, a salad?
Unfortunately, that colony is probably underground to keep
everyone safe from cosmic radiation. Add in the super thin
atmosphere and the lack of liquid water, and it’s pretty
clear that those salads are going to have to be grown
indoors, without sunlight. And while we can currently grow plants in those
conditions, we’re not that great at it. But it turns out, scientists are
working on ways to grow crops in total darkness!
One of the biggest problems with growing food indoors is
that, despite being around for more than 3.4 billion years,
photosynthesis still isn’t very efficient. Photosynthesis takes water,
carbon dioxide, and the energy-carrying particles
of light called photons, and turns them into sugar molecules that the
plant can use to live and grow.
But when that source of light is the Sun, most crop plants
only turn about 1% of that energy into what we can harvest.
So to feed an entire population, you need a lot of room to
grow a lot of plants that have a lot of leaves to take in a
lot of sunlight. And if you’re living on Mars, that can be
hard to come by. Over the years,
scientists have tried to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis
by using selective breeding and genetic engineering to make
little tweaks to various parts of the process.
But one team decided to bypass photosynthesis entirely.
Instead of plants using light to make their own food, the
team found a way to make food using the exact same ingredients: water, carbon dioxide,
and energy. But the energy comes from electricity.
In a process called electrocatalysis, that electricity breaks
apart the water and CO2 molecules to convert them into
oxygen gas and acetate, which is the main ingredient in
vinegar. After the
researchers mix the acetate with some additional nutrients, a plant could absorb the new food
source with its roots.
The plant can then use the carbon from the acetate in the
same way that it would use the carbon in the sugars
produced by photosynthesis. So this electrocatalysis
replaces the inefficient steps of photosynthesis, but it still
provides a plant…or any life form that relies on photosynthesis…the
chemical elements it needs to grow.
Using this acetate-enriched food, the researchers were
able to grow things like algae and yeast in total darkness.
And both grew more than they would have using their
natural photosynthesis powers. The algae grew four times as much,
and the yeast yield was eighteen times larger!.
The researchers also gave the acetate to plants. Like rice,
peas, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. But those weren’t
grown in the dark. The team was just testing
to make sure the crops could incorporate the carbon from
the acetate like they could with the carbon from their homemade sugar.
To track that, the team used a heavier form of carbon to
make the acetate. That allowed them to track how much
acetate these plants used, along with the sugars they
made from photosynthesis. As for why they didn’t just
grow the plants in the dark? Well, the paper doesn’t say.
But in the end, all these crops did use the acetate to
varying degrees.
So if things are looking good for growing crops in less
space, and in controlled environments like buildings, why
aren’t we using this amazing method already? Well, it turns out the team did
have some struggles growing their crops.
When they tested different concentrations of acetate on the
lettuce, the plants given the highest concentrations turned
out pretty wimpy, instead of growing way bigger. That
includes both the leafy salad parts as well as the roots.
The team suggested it might be the potassium in the
acetate solution that’s stunting the growth. Even so, the results aren’t thorough
enough for farmers to start dumping a bunch
of acetate on their crops and expecting them to grow better.
But with genetic engineering, researchers could develop
plants that are better at incorporating acetate into their
overall structure. And if this new
photosynthesis-skipping process actually does work, space colonists won’t be the
only ones who can grow food indoors,
and in more concentrated spaces. Cities don’t have the space to
grow enough food for their entire populations, so produce
often has to be shipped in from far away.
But by growing crops indoors, cities might be able to
produce enough food locally, which would mean fresher,
cheaper, and more sustainable meals. And as climate change threatens
agriculture around the world, indoor farms might help stem
the tide of food scarcity.
Now technically, the current version of this process still
uses sunlight at some point in the process, because the
electricity that created the acetate was generated by solar
panels. But there’s no reason that it has to use light.
For example, future Martian colonists may get some of
their power from miniature nuclear fission reactors.
So like with all experimentation, it’ll take time to work out
the kinks, but one day scientists might finally see the fruits
of their labor and grown without a drop of sunlight.
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