Cress that can find land mines

THIS IS NORMAL CRESS, AND IT'S ON A KEYBOARD NOT A LAND MINE. BUT IT'S A COOL PICTURE SO ARTISTIC LICENSE APPLIES. (PHOTO: DIRK GENTLY).

Land mines are a particularly evil wartime invention. They can do a serious amount of damage, often to innocent people such as women and children. Sadly they're also very cheap, and are a distressingly effective way of maintaining a border if you don't have a big wall or any barbed wire.

But once the war is waning, how do you find the mines and make the land safe again? Unfortunately, the whole point of a land mine is that it's hidden just under the surface of the dirt and as such is very hard to spot. The most effective way of finding one is to stand on it. Not helpful. But two separate teams of scientists are working on a solution that is just delicious in its simplicity. A plant that you can sow over a suspected land mine field, and that shows by the colour of its stem and leaves whether or not it's growing on top of a mine.

Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) is a plain little plant, related to the cabbage and mustard plants. It would be entirely unremarkable but for a few vital statistics, including a small genome, a swift life cycle (6 weeks), a small size, and high seed production. It's therefore the fruit fly of the plant world - a perfect crash test dummy for genetic modification.

In this particular modification, Arabidopsis is genetically sensitized to the nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) that leaches from buried explosives. The plants that grow on or near a land mine would flush a warning red rather than their usual cool green. The seeds could be sown from a plane, and could show within six weeks whether the land is covered in mines. Genius.

Comments

[Amara]

Thanks for that. I try to make people aware as often as I can that landmines prolong a country's devastation and prevent recovering after a war. Presently, Afghanistan is the most heavily mined country in the world. Since this news is so cool, I found a contact at http://www.icbl.org/ for the "Afghan Campain to Ban Landmines and sent him your information too. (I hope he understands English.)

[Katie]

Cool. I think it's a slightly old story, but I only just found it and I think it's so neat I don't mind that it's a bit old! Landmines are so sad, you can sort of see why people use them but they're such a use now pay later weapon. Scary. I hope this cress stuff works and makes a real difference asap.

[MT]

Reminds me of the super-dangerous weapon that was the McGuffin in of one of the first Star Trek movies. It caused a planet to become covered in vegetation--creating a biosophere.

[cristian]

this is great. however, there have been many cases in the passed where adding a seemingly innocent foreign species to another ecosystem wreaks havoc to the local environment. Even one with such a short life cycle and such, but it seems like it can propigate rather quickly, potencially muscleing out native species. Just saying, careful spreading it from planes on a massive scale without prior investigating on the effects it may have.

land mines are horrid.