NASA has teamed up with the International Potato Centre in Peru to dish out a new project: Develop a potato that could be grown on Mars.
A patch of land on the world's oldest desert, the Atacama, resembles the surface of the Red Planet.
And that is why scientists believe it is the perfect soil to breed a potato that could grow in extreme conditions, as on Mars.
"We’ve found here the closest similarity to the soil in Mars," Julio Valdivia, a NASA scientist, told Al Jazeera.
"We’ve done experiments like those done by missions that have gone to Mars. The potato is the ideal candidate because it has conquered all the ecosystems of this planet since the Spaniards took them from here in the 16th century."
