In many of my previous articles, I have often discussed the rather interesting phenomenon of plant communication. While this is undoubtedly an amazing testament to the inherent complexity of plant life, evolutionarily, the ability for plants to be able to communicate with one another is more of a pragmatic issue than anything else. Without communication pathways, plants would not be able to relay extremely important information necessary for their overall health, vitality, and livelihood.

While this evolutionarily selected form of communication restricts plants to only being able to communicate amongst one another, a team of researchers at the CSIC Institute of Acoustics have recently discovered a means by which ultrasound waves can be added to this communication link, effectively resulting in the ability of scientists to establish a firm connection with the leaves of plants.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this cutting edge technology is the fact that it is non-intrusive. Moreover, it doesn’t require any sort of intermediary substance such as the gels often used by doctors to catch a glimpse of a developing child in the womb of a mother. Instead, this technology relies on the transmission of broadband ultra sound waves from a portable device that cause the leaves of a plant to vibrate thus sending waves of critical information about the plant back to the original transmission device.  Such useful information as the water content of the leaves, their thickness, and their density can all be relayed from this inherently simple technology.

Describing the process, Tomas E. Gomez stated, “The voice of the leaves itself is what gives us information about their status and their properties, all in an innocuous and silent way since communication is established by ultrasound, with above-audible frequencies”. Even previously difficult data to obtain such as the water potential of these leaves can now be accurately estimated using this state of the art technique.

This is truly an amazing discovery as it has finally established a non-invasive, non-intrusive method for humans to being able to communicate with perhaps the most important life forms on the planet. Innovations like these prove that in instances where evolution limits us, humans have often been able to step in and fill the void with technology. As the years go on, I believe that we will continue to see a sharp rise in this trend.

Discussion Question: We have seen that various wave frequencies such as X-Rays cause intense radiation that can be harmful to human life. Do you predict that technologies like these will have any sort of negative impact on plant life?

News Article Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203111628.htm
Scientific Article Link: http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APPLAB000095000019193702000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes&ref=no