The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
Nanobionics: Bio-hacking Plants to Make Environmental Sensors
Scientists are discovering that plants are smarter than we’ve given them credit for. Research has found that plants are able to communicate among themselves and sense and respond to their environment. Plants have been found to work together to try to combat predators or to respond in unison to crises like drought.
Erica Grivas, freelance writer, wrote for Seattle’s Madison Park Times that “plants can share resources, form inter-species alliances, and species like sunflowers and black walnut trees even attack competitors. When a species is grown in a grove, elder trees will send nutrients to saplings, who don’t yet have the leaf mass to photosynthesize.”
Scientists at MIT have found now developing a technology that they’re calling nanobionics that lets them use plants as sensors and which enables the plants to send back signals that can communicate what they are sensing. The scientists have been able to do this by embedding nano-sized machinery into plant’s cells. The information from the plants is relayed back to the scientists by email.
Michael Strano, professor at MIT, said that “the plant is exquisitely sensitive to everything; for example, heat stress. It knows when there’s going to be drought before humans. It senses insect bites. On your phone you can see that the plant has experienced a bite which has broken the tissue, or that a part of the plant is too hot. This is a big breakthrough. It gives scientists and farmers and agricultural engineers real time information about what the plant is experiencing. It will lead to the development of agricultural tools.”
The nanobionic implants are being used to identify environmental problems like reporting if there is arsenic in the surrounding groundwater.
Min Hao Wong, an MIT graduate student, said that “these sensors give real-time information from the plant. It is almost like having the plant talk to us about the environment they are in. In the case of precision agriculture, having such information can directly affect yield and margins.”
