Scientists working to develop bomb-detecting plants

New York Times : Researchers at Colorado State University said Wednesday that they were working on developing a plant-kingdom early warning system: plants that subtly change color when exposed to minute amounts of TNT in the air. The research, published in the peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS One , and financed mostly by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, shows that plants are uniquely suited by evolution to chemical analysis of their environment, in detecting pests, for example. The trick, still in refinement, writes the New York Times‘s Kirk Johnson, is how to make sure the plant’s signal is clear enough and fast enough to be of use.