The lead contact point for this proposal, Chris McKay of NASA Ames, had a similar proposal around 14 years ago for growing a rose plant on a Mars lander. It'll be fun to see this idea finally (hopefully) take root.
Next: plants vs zombies in space. Seriously, this is super cool. This study has further implications of letting us know how plant life grows in different gravitational environment, which would give us interesting insight about life on other planets and how* Earth's gravity affected ecosystem and/or evolution on our own planet.<p>* Further studies will be needed before we can make any inferences on that front, but this is a good start.
I am surprised that such an experiment hasn't been conducted before! Was it just caution that held them back or something else? Since the moon lacks an atmosphere, there is zero chance of contamination of the moon with plants.
Wouldn't sending out any lifeforms from Earth to other planets contaminate, for lack of a better word, the environment there? There could be a lot about these places that we don't know yet.