By Andi Anderson
In a collaboration, Purdue University’s College of Agriculture has joined forces with STR, an information science company, to explore how plants could serve as natural chemical sensors.
Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its eX Virentia initiative—Latin for “from the greenery”—the project aims to determine whether plants exhibit detectable responses when exposed to specific synthetic chemicals.
The Purdue-STR partnership is one of four national teams funded for early-stage research under this unclassified DARPA program. The project focuses exclusively on naturally occurring plants, avoiding the use of genetically modified organisms or hazardous materials.
“Everything we’re learning is going to be widely available and made public,” said Joshua Widhalm, associate professor of horticulture and director of Purdue’s Center for Plant Biology. “We want to understand how plants respond to synthetic chemical exposures and whether those responses can be clearly observed and distinguished from other stresses.”
The study will also examine how environmental factors—such as drought, pathogens, and temperature stress—influence plant signalling when exposed to various chemicals.
STR brings expertise in data analytics, AI, and signal processing, while Purdue contributes advanced research infrastructure, including greenhouses and phenotyping facilities capable of rapid, nondestructive monitoring of plant traits under controlled conditions.
Bryan Young, professor of botany and plant pathology, applies his experience in weed science and herbicide response to identify how plants react to different chemical exposures.
Jian Jin, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering and founder of LeafSpec LLC, integrates advanced leaf imaging technologies to measure these changes precisely. His LeafSpec system and Purdue’s Ag Alumni Seed Phenotyping Facility enable researchers to visually capture and link chemical responses in real time.
By combining biological expertise and AI-driven analytics, this research could pave the way for future tools that use plants as living indicators of environmental or chemical activity, offering valuable insights for agriculture, defense, and ecological monitoring.
Photo Credit: purdue-university
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