A STUDY exploring the possibility of growing gene-edited rice on Mars conducted at the University of Arkansas in the United States was led by a professor from the Mariano Marcos State University.

Prof. Peter James Icalia Gann and his team created Martian simulant using basaltic rich soil mined from the Mojave Desert, with the help of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The study suggests that rice can grow and survive in Martian regolith through control of stress-related genes and the toxic perchlorate salts in the planet soil, MMSU said.

“In the Martian simulant, we grew three varieties of rice, including one wild-type and two gene-edited lines with genetic mutations that better enable them to respond to drought, sugar starvation and salinity. We also grew the same in a regular potted mix and a hybrid of the two,” Gann said.

He said that gene-edited rice plants grow well in the Martian simulant if a quarter of it is potting soil.

They also found that three grams of perchlorate per kilogram of Martian soil is the limit that any rice plant can grow.

The study was presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in March this year and featured in top-tier magazines including Forbes, Science Daily and Science News in the US.

Future experiments will involve testing newly developed Martian soil and other rice strains with increased tolerance for higher salt concentrations, MMSU said.

The gene-edited crops will also be placed in a Mars simulation chamber replicating the planet’s temperature and atmosphere, it added.

Gann, a professor of biotechnology, molecular genetics, and animal science at MMSU’s College of Agriculture, Food and Sustainable Development, is a doctoral candidate in cell and molecular biology at U of A, supported by the Fulbright-Commission on Higher Education scholarship program.

He is also an ambassador for the American Society of Plant Biologists, an organization dedicated to advancing plant sciences.

His research team includes Abhilash Ramachandran, a post-doctoral fellow at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences; Yheni Dwiningsih, a post-doctoral associate in plant sciences; Dominic Dharwadker, an undergraduate student in the Honors College; and Vibha Srivastava, a professor in the U of A Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences.