Scientists Turn Bacteria Into Hyperspectral Sensors to Assess Plant Health from Space

Today, assessing the chemical and nutritional composition of soils, as well as the health of plants, is done in laboratories using expensive reagents. Scientists in the United States have found a way to remotely analyze such parameters using only bacteria monitoring. These bacteria produce molecules that are easily visible to hyperspectral cameras at a great distance and even from orbit, which could radically change the approach to agriculture.

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Geneticists have long used fluorescent proteins to modify bacteria. With the help of such proteins, bacteria signal about certain processes of their life activity – it is convenient and clear. It is possible to find out about the level of enzymes or the state of bacterial colonies without conducting complex analyses. In a similar way, bacteria can be trained to recognize a wide range of nutrients or toxic substances, but in this case they must give not an ordinary light signal, but a special one – visible only to hyperspectral cameras.

Hyperspectral cameras allow satellites to obtain comprehensive information about soils, crops, and many other objects. This technology has been actively used since the 1970s for remote sensing of the Earth. Similarly, satellites or drones can read hyperspectral markers of bacteria designed, for example, to detect nitrogen content in soil, minerals in plants, or arsenic in water.

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified two bacteria that are promising for such tasks and introduced a set of reporter genes into their genomes, which produce molecules with a clearly expressed hyperspectral effect in response to the presence of specific compounds in the environment. Testing has shown that drones with hyperspectral cameras are capable of capturing such markers from a height of up to 90 meters.

As the researchers explain, there are no obstacles to making bacteria react to almost any substance. In the future, such bacteria could even be used to map minefields. Given that the study was funded by the US Department of Defense, the US Army Scientific Research Office, and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, this option may be one of the first to be implemented.