Genetically Modified Flower Detects Landmines

cdneng2 writes "Yahoo has the story that a Danish company has developed a plant that can detect landmines. The genetically modified weed that has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil." The company website has a bit more information.

Comments

What Happens

[City_Idiot]

When the kids of 3 world countries run out into the fields to pick the flowers??

Re:What Happens

[Golias]

When the kids of 3 world countries run out into the fields to pick the flowers??

Kind of puts a new twist on the old anti-Goldwater commercial, eh?

Any kid growing up in a country where landmines are a problem is probably very likely to listen to the nice soldiers that say "stay away from flowers that look like this... we grow them on mine fields."

The alternative is to further engineer the flowers to look or smell unpleasant, so kids will leave them alone.

Re:What Happens

[catbutt]

We not only get rid of mines, but wipe out color blindness. Two birds with one stone!

Re:What Happens

[glesga_kiss]

When the kids of 3 world countries run out into the fields to pick the flowers??

They grow up hating the country that made the landmines? Sounds all too familiar.

Re:What Happens

[cduffy]

to stop cross contamination

You mean "to prevent unauthorized use", right?

Preventing cross-contamination is just a handy side effect.

Re:What Happens

[Guppy06]

"Any kid growing up in a country where landmines are a problem is probably very likely to listen to the nice soldiers"

Any kid growing up in a country where landmines are a problem probably has at least one friend their own age short a few limbs.

Yes, but...

[dustmote]

Who's going to volunteer to plant them? BOOOM!!! Still, this is a pretty neat idea. Might not be so good for people who are color-blind, like my dad. :)

Re:Yes, but...

[SkArcher]

RTA -the plant is infertile, so it won't spread into unwanted areas. They'll probably spread the seed from aircraft hoppers - it'll have a fairly light seed casing.

Re:Yes, but...

[GrenDel Fuego]

Then you just have to worry about birds eating them.. but hey, if a bird explodes, you found a mine.

Re:Yes, but...

[synth7]

Who's going to volunteer to plant them?

Ah, yes... the brainpower of geekus maximus shows that it needs to get out of the house a little more often. You see, plants produce these little things called "seeds" which are actually baby plants in hibernation. These "seeds" typically germinate when sitting in suitable soil... it all depends upon the plant itself, of course: a scrub grass or low-lying shrub will grow in pretty harsh places.

Anyhow, I hope you can see where this is leading. Plants tend to reproduce on their own without the need for human intervention. Of course, if you really wanted these plants to grow in a location, you could always try something innovative like flying overhead and sprinkling a mixtures of seed and fertilizer on the patch of land in question. It may take several years for the plant to get established and spread, but, well, I don't think anyone would complain about turning this particular patch of land over to these weeds for a time, as it's a bit tricky to use it for anything with all those mines in it anyhow.

Honestly, at least half a dozen people have posted "How are they going to plant it?!?" without ever bothering to stop and think for a second. What is this, Fark.com?

Re:Yes, but...

[SkArcher]

and evidently you haven't actually read the article - the plants are infertile (don't themselves produce seeds) to prevent the genetically modified weed from spreading in areas where it isn't wanted.

It is sown from the air or from conventionally cleared strips of land.

It grows in roughly 3 - 6 weeks.

Why do they have to change color?

[Kaeru the Frog]

Shouldn't the gardeners blowing up while planting flowers be enough?

Re:Why do they have to change color?

[lommer]

I realize this is a joke, but to stem the flood of responses by people who didn't RTFA, here's the scoop:

You take a plane, fill it with seed "bomblets" and disperse them over a minefield. The bomblets embed in the soil and the plants grow. Within a few months you have a field of plants, a few of which are a different colour. The ones that have changed colour are close to mines. This makes finding the mines easier, and it also makes it possible to find a safe route through the field by only looking at the colour of the plants.

Pick the flower

[c_oflynn]

I can just see a field of flowers all one colour.

Then there is one flower that is a different colour, and you think its so unique. You go over to take a look at it...

On the topic of DNA

[$calar]

One of my professors does research in nanotechnology. He is currently growing nanotubes in his lab and one of the applications of this technology is as a detector, such as what this plant does, only at the nano-scale. Apparently when the technology matures, detectors of certain types of illnesses can be made. By a drop of blood on the detector, one can learn the results instantly instead of waiting for human analysis. Very cool.

Big deal

[overshoot]

The grass in my back yard turns green around land mines already.

OK, seriously, this is great. Too many kids are missing body parts from old munitions.

Good Idea

[Grey_14]

This is the kinda thing Genetic Engineering and Modification should be going into, not for Cheaper prices in the supermarket, or Glowing fish,
Lets see more food in starving country's, Less Landmines, and other ways to improve life,

Of course, thats whats been said about just about any new or improved technology in the last what, 30 years?

Re:Good Idea

[donutello]

Cheaper prices in the supermarket are usually the result of greater production and lower cost to produce so the same stuff that brings you cheaper prices in the supermarket is what you need to have more food in starving countries.

GM is a tool. Like almost any other tool you can use it for good, evil or something frivolous.

What next? You want legislation saying that computers should only be used to educate low-income students and not for playing games?

There's an example of unique thinking.

[Sheetrock]

Glowing fish are neat, but this is the type of breakthrough that should convince holdout countries that genetically modified plants are a good thing. Granted, whatever this plant is it isn't likely it'll grow everywhere, but this is so innovative that I wonder if it can be applied to the detection of other materials in the soil.

It's even self-limiting, so despite being a weed it won't choke out the local flora.

Phase 2

[John Jorsett]

Develop the next generation flower that detonates itself, taking out the mine, instead of just turning a different color. You'd probably risk being gunned down by airport security for carrying flowers, but progress comes at a price ...

What about fertilisers?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Many fertilisers are made from various nitrogen compounds that are similar to explosives. That is why you can make a pretty nice bang with fertiliser + diesel fuel, and why there is a nice little relationship between fertiliser and explosives factories.

Sure, out in the African bush you would not expect to find fertilisers but I extect some of the mine hot zones in Asia are fertilised quite heavily.

What do you need flowers for!

[Mieckowski]

All you have to do is look at the numbers in the adjacent boxes.

People are so lazy!

Thought it was mimes

[AtariAmarok]

Sorry, I thought this was about flowers detecting mimes. I was so looking forward to using this during my next trip to New York City. My mistake.

poetic

[theCat]

There is something marvelously just and poetic about using flowers to detect land mines. Thousands of children and innocents a year are blown to giblets, or horribly hutilated, by land mines. May a thousand flowers bloom.

Re:That is INSANE.

[c_oflynn]

If you were first post, that would mean you *should* have had lots of time that could have been spent reading the article.

Plants normally go red or redish in autumn where the red pigments dominate over the green ones, or as a result of stressed growth conditions. The genetically engineered plants are modified in a way that only allows these plants to go red if triggered by a specific stimulus present in the soil. The stimulus is unique to the plant dependent on the actual application that is pursued with the specific plant. Stimuli may be heavy metals, or NO2 that evaporates when explosives are reduced in the soil. Such stimuli trigger the production of a key-enzyme in the biochemical pathway responsible for production of the group of red pigments called anthocyanins. The resulting colour change is expected within 3-6 weeks dependent on the growth conditions.

Re:Cost?

[Carnildo]

The nice thing about these flowers is they have a pretty good idea of what the market will be like. Price the seeds so that de-mining the world will cover the research and production costs, leaving about a 10% profit.

The USA still supports the use of landmines

[djmurdoch]

The article states

The use of land mines was outlawed in the 1997 Ottawa Convention and more than 90 countries committed themselves last year to cleaning up the debris of war to reduce the number of civilian casualties from munitions left by armed conflicts.

However, the USA was not a signatory to this treaty as of 2002, according to this web page. Apparently there were plans to sign in 2006, but the landmine-lovers were working to change those. Has anything changed?

There aren't many other countries that were both democratic and non-signatories: Finland, India, Israel, Korea, Russia, Turkey (but the democracy of some of those might be questionable). The entire "Axis of Evil" made the list, though.

Re:The USA still supports the use of landmines

[Zathrus]

The US military has an issue with getting rid of landmines. North Korea. The entire defense of South Korea weighs heavily on the use of landmines (both anti-personnel and anti-tank).

The US does, however, clean up areas that it's mined once it's done with them. I doubt it's a perfect job, but it's considerably better than the vast number of military forces that use mines and don't clean them up (which is where the issue has come from).

If anyone can suggest an equally effective deterrent to invasion that requires an equal amount of manpower, I'm sure the US Army would like to hear about it.

It's not an issue of "landmine lovers", it's an issue of doing protection in an effective manner. (Which, BTW, is the condition on signing in 2006... AFAIK, nobody has stepped up to the plate). I haven't found any reports of the US using landmines anywhere else -- including Iraq -- since 1997 (the mines at Guantanamo were removed in 1999). They did stockpile them, but they apparantly weren't used. The US has not sold landmines internationally since 1993.

BTW, you missed Pakistan, Georgia, Belarus, Egypt, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mongolia (parliamentary - very much questionable), Morocco (constitutional monarchy; similar to the UK's), Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Tuvalu. All have some form of representive government along the lines of a republic or democracy (no, the US is not a democracy -- it's a republic). Between those and the ones you listed, it's about a third of the list. Admittedly, some of the countries on the (full) list probably just haven't bothered -- particularly Tuvalu and Tonga.

Minesweeper Flowers

[slstickle]

Will these flowers be genetically engineered to have numbers on them, indicating how many mines are growing in the plots next to them?

Re:That is INSANE.

[Hentai]

For those who are curious, here is a picture of the little guy in bloom - presumably, the entire plant turns red (stem and all) in the presence of NO2, not just the flowers.

Good, good, good!!!

[ElGanzoLoco]

My family lives in Cambodia (both NGO workers), one of the most mined countries on earth.

Kids still die everyday because they step on landmines. There are anti tank mines, that will kill you, antipersonal mines, that will cripple you, and UXO (unexploded ordnance) that can do about anything.

You go to the market in certain places in Cambodia, and you see that almost 10% (no kidding) of the population is crippled, one or both legs missing, sometimes an arm... Shit.

Worse: Cambodia has huge monsoon rains, and the floods eventually transform into torrents. So the mines MOVE with time. So there you are, happily walking on a path that has been un-mined last year, and BOOM, the rain had brought a mine right there. Scary.

Even worse. Sometimes UXO (more rarely, mines) go right into the city, because of some construction site that uses sand dug from out of the city, and that has UXO's inside (rare, but it happened to one of our friends doing construction for his NGO).

Anything that can be used in demining should be. You might think that demining mostly occurs in rice fields and stuff but no, in some remote places over there, they have to clear villages *house by house*, garden by garden. There are still millions (litteraly) of landdmines scattered everywhere, and even though the foreign demining teams, and the Cambodians they have trained, do a great job, it never will be enough.

Still, Cambodia is one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Now, most touristic-and-not-so-touristic places are safe, so go there, but stay away from anywhere the locals tell you to NOT go.

Re:Will they grow in desserts?

[aardvarkjoe]

Will they grow in desserts?

They'll grow in cake and fresh pie, but they won't grow so well in cold climates such as ice cream.