Spinach sending emails? Lettuce mark them as spam. As baizarre as it sounds, engineers at MIT through the use of nanotechnology, have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to the scientists.
When the spinach roots detect the presence of nitroaromatics in groundwater, a compound often found in explosives like landmines, the carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves emit a signal. This signal is then read by an infrared camera, sending an email alert to the scientists.
This experiment is part of a wider field of research which involves engineering electronic components and systems into plants. The technology is known as “plant nanobionics,” and is effectively the process of giving plants new abilities.
Because of the vast amount of data plants absorb from their surroundings, they are ideally situated to monitor ecological changes. Scientists everywhere are rooting them!
