Permanent Moon habitation and later missions to Mars both face serious questions of self-reliance, which the Italian Moon-Rice project aims to address by producing a crop bioengineered to grow under conditions unlike those occurring naturally on Earth.

The project, presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Antwerp, Belgium on July 9, 2025, aspires to engineer a crop that can grow almost anywhere, from deep-space outposts to some of Earth’s most extreme environments. Success will mean that space exploration can transition from costly resupply missions to local production of fresh foods full of vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber.

The Challenges of Feeding Space Missions

“Living in space is all about recycling resources and living sustainably,” says Marta Del Bianco, a plant biologist at the Italian Space Agency. “We are trying to solve the same problems that we face here on Earth.”

While there are strong nutrition and self-reliance benefits to pursuing fresh food for space missions, the team points out that the food may help to provide relief from the already psychologically taxing long-term effects of space habitation.

“Watching and guiding plants to grow is good for humans, and while pre-cooked or mushy food can be fine for a short period of time, it could become a concern for longer-duration missions,” Del Bianco says.

“If we can make an environment that physically and mentally nourishes the astronauts, it will reduce stress and lower the chances of people making mistakes,” she adds. “In space, the best case of a mistake is wasted money, and the worst case is the loss of lives.”

Producing a Moon-Rice

Italy is leading the Moon-Rice Project, a collaboration between the Italian Space Agency and three major Italian universities, each with their own specializations that are important to the Moon-Rice project. The University of Milan is noted for its work in rice genetics, while Sapienza University of Rome has done significant work in crop physiology manipulation, and the University of Naples Federico II has already conducted extensive research in space crops.

Size is one of the primary concerns for the new project, as most rice varieties, even including dwarf strains, are too large for space agriculture.

“What we need is a super-dwarf, but this comes with its own challenges,” Dr Del Bianco says. “Dwarf varieties often come from the manipulation of a plant hormone called gibberellin, which can reduce the height of the plant, but this also creates problems for seed germination. They’re not an ideal crop, because in space, you just don’t have to be small, you must also be productive.”

“Researchers at the University of Milan are isolating mutant rice varieties that can grow to just 10 cm high, so they’re really tiny and this is a great starting point,” says Dr Del Bianco. “At the same time, Rome has identified genes that can alter the plant architecture to maximize production and growth efficiency.”

Enhancing Crops for Moon Habitation and Beyond

Another major concern is how the plants will respond to reduced gravity. While doing experiments in real-world microgravity environments remains out of the project’s scope, the team has developed workarounds.

“We simulate micro-gravity on Earth by continually rotating the plant so that the plant is pulled equally in all directions by gravity. Each side of the plant gets activated continuously and it doesn’t know where the up and down is,” says Dr Del Bianco.

To mitigate the inefficiency of animal agriculture, which is too resource and space-intensive for the kind of artificial habitats that space missions will require, the team is attempting to improve the protein content of rice. Researchers are presently attempting to increase the ratio of starch to protein inside rice embryos.

Beyond the intended use for space missions, the team sees their project as potentially having benefits for humans in challenging environments here on Earth as well, which may similarly require closed habitation units.

“If you can develop a robust crop for space, then it could be used at the Arctic and Antarctic poles, or in deserts, or places with only a small amount of indoor space available,” says Dr Del Bianco.