Grass detects landmines

A bio-engineering company in Copenhagen, Denmark is experimenting with a genetically modified plant that will turn red when " smelling " the smell of mines.

The researcher of the company changed the gene of a common grass, scientifically dubbed Arabidopsis Thaliana , which turns red when exposed to nitrogen dioxide emitted from unexploded mines. .

Grass discovered mines (Photo: tech.163.com)

The researchers experimented on an old military plot with lots of mines and planted a lot of big Arabidopsis Thaliana grass, the results were very positive.

The leaves of this grass have become red when they encounter Nitrogen dioxide gas, but they cannot thrive. In the grass family of Arabidopsis Thaliana, there are 1600 different species, this company has just experimented with one of them.

Currently, the company has ordered 17 different types of Arabidopsis Thaliana plants from around the world.

Researchers plan to study the type of grass that Arabidopsis Thaliana can accurately detect mines in the next 2 years and in the future, biotechnology can be used to test the detection of devices. Big size explosion.

According to statistics of the International Organization to ban landmines, up to 1.5-2,000 people are injured or killed every year by stepping on mines.

Although the mine sweep technique has been used, but the use of this technique is very slow, the current leakage area is only 1% compared to a total of about 20,000,000 km2 of mines around the world. If the test is successful, this mine detection grass will be able to speed up the detection of mines by 5 times and save lives, even the lives of millions of people.

Tuyet Nhung