What will astronauts eat on the moon? It's a question that has quietly shadowed every ambitious lunar exploration plan for decades. Now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have offered a concrete — and surprisingly humble — answer: chickpeas.
In a study published March 5 in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists announced they had successfully grown and harvested chickpeas using simulated lunar regolith, the rocky, mineral-rich powder that covers the surface of the moon. It is the first time this crop has been produced in such a medium, and researchers say it marks a meaningful step toward understanding what sustainable food production might look like for future lunar missions.
The Challenge of Growing Anything on the Moon
Lunar regolith — technically, the layer of loose material blanketing the moon's surface — is about as inhospitable to plant life as a growing medium can be. It contains none of the microorganisms or organic material that make Earth soil fertile. While it does contain minerals and nutrients that plants need, it also harbors heavy metals that can be toxic to plants at sufficient concentrations.
The fundamental challenge, said principal investigator Sara Santos, a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG), is one of transformation: how do you convert an inert, potentially toxic substrate into something capable of sustaining life?
"The research is about understanding the viability of growing crops on the moon," Santos said. "How do we transform this regolith into soil? What kinds of natural mechanisms can cause this conversion?"
The Recipe: Worm Castings and Fungi
The team's solution drew on two biological partners that are familiar to sustainable agriculture on Earth but have never before been tested as tools for extraterrestrial food production.
The first was vermicompost — the nutrient-rich byproduct produced by red wiggler earthworms as they break down organic material. On a lunar mission, that organic material could include food scraps or cotton-based clothing and hygiene products that would otherwise be discarded. The vermicompost provides the essential nutrients, microbial diversity, and organic matter that regolith alone cannot offer, and its production aboard a spacecraft or lunar habitat would itself serve as a form of waste recycling.
The second was arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which the researchers coated directly onto the chickpea seeds before planting. These fungi form a symbiotic relationship with legumes, helping the plant take up essential nutrients while simultaneously reducing its absorption of the heavy metals present in regolith — a dual benefit that proved critical in this setting.
The team used simulated moon dirt from Exolith Labs, a commercially available simulant engineered to match the mineral composition of actual lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts.
What the Results Showed
Planting chickpeas in mixtures of simulated regolith and vermicompost at varying ratios, the researchers found that growing media containing up to 75% moon dirt could successfully produce harvestable chickpeas. Beyond that threshold, plants showed signs of significant stress and died early — though even the stressed plants inoculated with fungi outlasted those without, underscoring the fungi's protective role.
A particularly encouraging finding: the mycorrhizal fungi were able to colonize and survive within the regolith simulant, suggesting that in a real lunar growing environment, they would only need to be introduced once rather than re-applied with each planting cycle.
The Questions That Remain
Successfully harvesting the chickpeas is a milestone, but the researchers are careful to frame it as a beginning rather than an endpoint. Whether the chickpeas are actually safe and nutritious enough to eat remains unknown.
"We want to understand their feasibility as a food source," said Jessica Atkin, the paper's first author and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. "How healthy are they? Do they have the nutrients astronauts need? If they aren't safe to eat, how many generations until they are?"
The concern is not trivial. Heavy metal uptake in edible plant tissue is a serious food safety issue, and the researchers must confirm that the fungi-assisted growing process successfully blocked sufficient metal absorption to make the chickpeas safe for human consumption. Nutritional profiling will also be needed to confirm the legumes can meaningfully supplement an astronaut's diet.
Why Chickpeas?
The choice of chickpea as a test crop was deliberate. The 'Myles' variety used in the study is compact in size — important in space-constrained mission environments — and notably resilient. As a legume, chickpeas are also capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen through root symbiosis, meaning they can contribute to soil health over successive growing cycles rather than simply depleting it.
Nutritionally, chickpeas are protein-dense and provide fiber, iron, and a range of micronutrients, making them an efficient caloric and dietary investment for long-duration missions where every gram of food payload carries a cost.
The Bigger Picture: Feeding Artemis and Beyond
The research takes on added urgency with NASA's Artemis program bringing humans back to the lunar surface in the coming years. Long-duration lunar stays — and eventual crewed missions to Mars — will require astronauts to supplement or replace Earth-supplied food with locally grown produce. The weight and logistics costs of launching all food from Earth make in-situ food production not just appealing, but ultimately necessary for extended exploration.
The project was initially self-funded by Santos and Atkin before receiving support through a NASA FINESST grant, a fellowship program that funds graduate student and early-career researcher contributions to NASA's science mission.
The findings represent a proof of concept rather than a ready-made lunar farm. But in demonstrating that chickpeas can be coaxed from moon dirt with the right biological tools, the researchers have moved the timeline for sustainable lunar agriculture measurably closer to reality.
The study, "Bioremediation of lunar regolith simulant through mycorrhizal fungi and plant symbioses enables chickpea to seed," was published March 5, 2026 in Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-35759-0.
Originally published on University Herald
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