Believe me, this is not clickbait, the scientists outdid themselves with this one. Although keeping in mind the technological advancement towards which we are heading, it will be disrespectful if we feel a high amount of shock towards such experiments, but the very fact that the scientist has turned a mere food into a nanotech fully equipped to detect climate change and send signals is still astonishing enough for us go all gaga about it!
Plant Nano-bionics is an excellent technology that deals with combining plants with technology giving them an ability far superior to a normal plant. This email sending spinach too is part of this technology where engineers at MIT in the US made the spinach capable of detecting explosive materials, the information of which then can be sent back to the scientists. Roots are the key elements here as they are the ones responsible for detecting all sorts of compounds that are involved in explosives while the plant leaves send the signal. The scientists working on this experiment fully understand the importance of the network system that the roots have which ultimately can be used for such operations.
The basic purpose of this experiment was to use these spinach plants to detect explosives, however, the fact that this very mechanism can also be used in detecting climate change was also observed soon. Professor Michael Strano believes that the plants are highly responsive to the environment, making them a perfect fit for such an experiment where they can be the perfect detectors of any kind of change in the climate which can give a heads-up to the scientists about the coming climate situation.
The scientists did not stop here, as they have also found this other property of spinach that is yet again highly recommendable to use! According to their findings, spinach can also function as a catalyst when turned into a carbon Nano-sheet, which suggests its use as a fuel cell as well. Spinach has a high amount of iron and nitrogen which is a key element in choosing this particular vegetable for the same.
Point is, that the days of plants communicating with humans are not that far, it may not be typical gossip, however, the exchange of such useful information between a plant and a human is no less of an achievement in itself!
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