{"id":75727,"date":"2020-06-25T16:43:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T20:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dronelife.com\/?p=75727"},"modified":"2020-06-26T08:15:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T12:15:36","slug":"giving-tomatoes-their-shots-the-future-of-plant-medicine-may-come-from-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dronelife.com\/2020\/06\/25\/giving-tomatoes-their-shots-the-future-of-plant-medicine-may-come-from-drones\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Tomatoes Their Shots: The Future of Plant Medicine May Come From Drones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nobody likes getting a shot – but even plants might need them sometimes. \u00a0MIT researchers are exploring ways to administer injections to plants with drones.<\/p>\n

As described in the original article<\/a>\u00a0plants, much like people, get sick.\u00a0 The treatment traditionally involves the spread of chemicals designed to mitigate or alleviate the disease. \u00a0Spreading or spraying chemicals usually results in much of the treatment being absorbed by the soil, rather than the plant.\u00a0These researchers are testing a new type of needle that may be used \u00a0in the future to shoot medicine into diseased plants directly, rather than spreading chemicals in the traditional method.<\/p>\n

Science News for Students<\/a>\u00a0 says: “Similar to the way COVID-19 sickens and kills people, disease epidemics are wiping out entire groves of bananas,\u00a0oranges and other crops. To treat plant diseases, farmers usually spray chemicals. Some of these target the germs that cause disease. Other chemicals target the pests that carry those germs.”<\/p>\n

But \u201cless than 5 percent [of the chemicals] go inside the plant,\u201d MIT researcher Yunteng\u00a0Cao points out.<\/p>\n

The more precise shot delivery method of giving plants medicine is called a phytoinjector. \u00a0“It\u2019s a tiny patch containing even tinier barbs that pierce the plant. Those barbs are microneedles. And they\u2019re made to dissolve. As they do, they release their medicine. Later, the patch falls off or can be removed,” says Science News.<\/p>\n

A similar technology is already available for humans.<\/p>\n

One of the major problems facing agronomists in using this technology is delivery- if the patches must be attached by hand to each individual plant, the technology may be impractical for large farming operations. \u00a0Drones, already heavily used in agriculture, offer one possible solution. \u00a0Researchers equipped a small drone with a toy dart gun in order to inject the needle into the plant – see the enlarged video below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n