Latest from me at Wired:
In the not too distant future, we could see cyborg plants that tell us when they need more water, what chemicals they’ve been exposed to, and what parasites are eating their roots. These part-organic, part-electronic creations may even tell us how much pollution is in the air. And yes, they’ll plug into the network.
That’s right: We’re on our way to the Internet of Plants.
That’s the message from Andrea Vitaletti, the head of a blue-sky research group working on this very thing at a lab in Italy. The project is called PLEASED, short for “PLants Employed As SEnsing Devices.” Though the project is still in the early stages, Vitaletti believes plants could serve as ideal sensors, monitoring so many aspects of our environment. Plants are cheap and resilient, he argues, and they could potentially monitor many different things simultaneously.
“Plants have millions of years of evolution. They are robust. They want to survive,” Vitaletti says.
Full Story: Wired: The Internet of Vegetables: How Cyborg Plants Can Monitor Our World