It's now possible...due to a form of artificial photosynthesis. Plants are grown on a substrate of acetate that supports their physiology. It's generated through an electrocatalytic process.
They've so far managed to grow algae (at faster rates than natural photosynthesis), cowpeas, tomatoes, tobacco, rice, canola, and green peas.
This just made moon colonies much more feasible as you won't need to use grow lamps to keep plants alive through the 14 day night. It could also be used on Mars, on space colonies. On Ganymede, Expanse readers ;).
It also may make the science fiction trope of people on space colonies eating algae more likely...there's all kinds of ways to make it palatable. Algae could also be grown to scrub carbon dioxide as part of the life support system.
It could also be used to feed farmed fish to provide protein for our colonists. Of course, we would have to either modify the algae not to be toxic (many green algae have chemical defenses) or carefully choose strains.
And on Earth, this could be used to grow crops indoors or to increase yields.
(Of course, what's the over under on marijuana growing fine this way too? Ahem)
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