Talking to plants: Now they’ll talk back

Talking to your plants will no longer be solely an occupation of earth-goddesses or hippies — especially as they will be able to talk back.

The talking plants — known as “cyborg plants” — have been created by a team of biologists and computer engineers with €1 million help from the EU’s research budget.

The plants will share valuable information, such as how they are feeling, whether they have too much sun, or not enough water and whether the last sprinkle of fertiliser suited them, as well as if there is too much acid, or ozone, or salt in their environment.

So apart from allowing you to make them happy by correcting their problems, they will also be telling a bigger story — about climate change.

The plants have little micro-sensors built into them that acts as an environmental monitor. The sensors collect the plant’s signals, analyse them, combine them with those of other plants nearby, and produce a clear analysis of its environment.

“In other words, the plant will tell you how it feels and why,” said European Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

But everyone will be able to have their own talking flowers and shrubs because the sensors are made from low-cost, readily available components and the technology is open source.

“We hope that anyone from nature-lovers to farmers, will be able to determine if a plant needed more or less sun and water, or how a specific fertiliser was affecting its health. And since the solution is wifi-based, even monitoring your garden from your living room would be possible.”

The work was led by an Italian SME called WLAB, set up especially to carry out such research and develop it. Project coordinator Professor Andrea Vitaletti said that the plants can be a valuable tool in helping us understand our environment in terms of climate change.

“But then change is up to us”, he added.

The information on the creating talking plants is freely available as part of the PLEASED project (plants employed as sensing devices) in the hope that more will become involved in the work and improve the design, including developing algorithms that understand the plants signals.