Tech Lets Plants Phone For Water

Tech Lets Plants Phone for Water


May 29, 2009 -- Carrots might not scream when
pulled from the ground, but new technology is giving
vegetables a voice in how they are raised. Microchippedplants can now send text messages to a farmer's
cell phone and ask for water.
"It's akin to a clip on earring, very thin and smaller than a postage stamp, and is affixed to the plant leaf," saidRichard Stoner, President of AgriHouse, a company marketing the technology.
"The farmer would just need their regular cell phone service, and the plant would send a text message when it needed water."For areas that receive regular and plentiful rainfall, such detailed crop monitoring might not be useful or economical. But in the western United States, where much of the water comes from undergroundaquifers, conserving water, and more importantly, conserving the electricity that pumps it to the surface and across fields, could save farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
Water inthe open spaces of the west is valuable, but it's virtually worth its weight in gold in outer space. The original cell phone for plants was developed years ago by scientists working with NASA on futuremanned missions to the moon and Mars.
"You need plants on future space missions," said Hans-Dieter Seelig, a scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who worked on the original NASAproject.

"They take out waste carbon dioxide, produce breathable oxygen, and the astronauts can use them as food," said Seelig.
During their research, the NASA scientists concluded that astronautswouldn't be able to take anywhere near enough food and supplies for an estimated two-year mission to Mars. The pilots and Ph.D.'s selected for the trip would have to spend most of their time as celestialsubsistence farmers.
To reduce the amount of time and supplies necessary to grow crops, scientists clipped sensors, wired to a central computer, to plants so astronauts would know exactly when and...