surprising: check out plant that serves as bomb detector

'Bionic' plants can detect explosives

Scientists have transformed the humble spinach plant into a bomb detector.

By embedding tiny tubes in the plants' leaves, they can be made to pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics, which are found in land mines and other buried munitions.

Real-time information can then be wirelessly relayed to a handheld device.

The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) work is published in the journal Nature Materials.

The scientists implanted nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes (tiny cylinders of carbon) into the leaves of the spinach plant.