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Plants Talk to Bar-Ilan Scientists

The old saying goes that “if you talk to your plants, they will grow strong and healthy”. But what if you listened to your plants? What would happen then?

Well, a team of Bar-Ilan University scientists asked that very same question and discovered that, amazingly, plants could tell them if bodies of water are safe or contaminated – a discovery with applications as far-reaching as the early detection of contaminants and toxins in drinking water.

Professor Zvy Dubinsky and Dr. Yulia Pinchasov of Bar-Ilan’s Goodman Life Sciences Faculty developed a technology to “listen” to the sound that microscopic algae plants release into a body of water. The researchers’ innovation, which has been called “revolutionary”, was recently published in a number of scientific journals, including the prestigious Hydrobiological Journal.

Early detection of toxins in drinking water supplies is vital. Around the world, drinking water is constantly monitored by the authorities to detect contamination and any decline in quality.

Their groundbreaking procedure is based on measurements of the level of photosynthesis in aquatic plants and uses a special aquatic microphone to pick up sound waves.

By analyzing the rate of photosynthesis (the process of converting sunlight into energy) of plants growing in the water, the researchers can discover whether the plant realizes its full photosynthesis potential. When a plant does not reach its potential, this indicates that something is wrong in its growth environment.

The researchers radiate a green laser beam on the aquatic plant. A plant that hasn't realized its full photosynthesis potential will use part of the laser light, converting it into energy, with the rest being converted into heat. This heat causes the water to expand and therefore produce a change in pressure, which is actually a sound wave that can be picked up by a hydrophone - a special microphone designed for the water.

Based on the quantity of light energy that is converted into heat and sound, researchers can calculate the remainder that has been absorbed by the plant, and thus learn of its condition.

A plant suffering from lead poisoning, the result of waste being dumped into bodies of water by battery and paint manufacturing facilities, will produce a different resonance than that of a healthy plant. By using this method, the Bar-Ilan University researchers were able to detect early on the amount of penetrating contaminants and toxins that harm flora and fauna.

This new method, which began as a doctoral project by Dr. Pinchasov in Prof. Dubinsky's laboratory, could be used to replace today's outdated measurement methods, such as marking a plant's growth substrate with radioactive carbon or measuring the quantities of oxygen emitted by the plant.