Now, online today inBMC Ecology, researchers report a new type of mechanism that some plants use to communicate.
It is quite intuitive that as multi-cellular organisms, plants need to communicate between cells.
Our findings suggest that rice plants utilize ethylene to communicate their proximity to neighbouring plants in a high population density environment.
Plants are known to communicate with each other via shade, aromatic chemicals, and physical touch, promoting processes such as growth and defense against disease, as well as attraction of bees and other pollinators.
If such mechanical vibrations or sound waves can extend over large distances within the organism and also outside the organism, then the possibility arises that plants may actually use sound to communicate with other plants or organisms.
This affords them the ability to communicate: plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.
They also know that I will use every imaginable way to communicate plant cell biology, and particularly my research on the Golgi apparatus, to as many people as I can reach.
"African Electronics isn't about electronic gadgets, but about the minds behind those inventions, about individual power," says Clottey. "In Ghana we use animals, plants, nature to heal ourselves, to communicate our spiritual problems and that is very powerful.
The plants become these actual physical instruments and you are able to communicate back and forth between the plants.
In addition TCP/IP protocol is used by the controller to communicate with the plant.
