Teledyne Scientific, part of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY), announced that its Plants as Silent Sentinels (PASS) team has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to participate in the eX Virentia (eXVi) program. In collaboration with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), the team will launch a novel interdisciplinary research initiative to transform native plants into real‑time environmental sensors of chemical exposures.
As part of the program, the PASS team will conduct rapid, high‑throughput greenhouse experiments to generate one of the most comprehensive datasets of plant responses to date. These experiments will characterize how plants react—both externally and internally—to a diverse array of chemical triggers, capturing morphological, spectral, and molecular changes with unprecedented resolution.
The system integrates hyperspectral imaging, multi‑omics profiling, pigment chemistry, and advanced AI‑driven and probabilistic modeling. Together, these approaches will identify subtle, treatment‑specific plant signatures and reveal the biological mechanisms underlying those responses. The analytical tools and curated datasets developed under eXVi will enable scalable prediction of plant responses and establish a scientific foundation for future plant‑based sensing systems.
Such systems could ultimately serve as distributed chemical sensing networks, providing broad geographic insight into environmental exposures using native vegetation and existing or emerging remote‑sensing capabilities.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
