To grow food on Mars, scientists first need to have an in-depth understanding of the different kinds of soil found on the planet. 

Mars has been mapped extensively for its geology, minerals and chemistry, yet researchers have lacked a unified system to classify its soils by multiple properties. 

Now, researchers at the University of Sydney have classified Martian soils into 2,000 types, mapping where they occur across the planet. The work could help scientists figure out which areas are worth investigating for future missions and whether any Martian soil could support crops in a greenhouse.

The system also identifies one soil class, called Nohibareth, as a promising candidate for supporting plant growth under controlled conditions. 

“A future greenhouse on Mars would need more than air, water and light. Its builders would also need to know what lies beneath to understand better starting points for growing plants,” Alex McBratney, one of the researchers and a soil scientist at the University of Sydney, said in their study. 

The new research work introduces the term ‘areths’ for Martian soil classes, drawing on Ares, the Greek name for Mars.

The classification is called the Provisional Polythetic Areth Classification System (PPACS). It organizes soils into three levels: 10 major realms, 100 assemblages and 2,000 detailed forms. 

Rather than assigning a class based on a single characteristic, the system considers combinations of properties, including texture, mineralogy, pH and profile thickness — the depth of the soil layer.

To build the framework, the researchers combined orbital observations of Mars with models to estimate soil properties across nearly 800 million locations.

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