Cyborg Baby Spinach Could One Day Detect Chemical Weapons

Imagine bomb sniffing plants in airports. Scientists are turning your average shrub into a sophisticated data collector.

"I like to think/(right now, please!)/of a cybernetic forest/filled with pines and electronics/ where deer stroll peacefully/past computers/as if they were flowers/with spinning blossoms," poet Richard Brautigan wrote in 1967. His heavily optimistic (or heavily satirical) take on cyborg plants was prescient. Now, half a century later, researchers are working on giving baby spinach bomb-detecting capabilities.

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