Micro-chip in endangered plants? -Forwarded

[Ron Kaneen]

I have not heard about embedding microchips in plants, but Dr. Eleanor
White of the Pacific Forestry Center has been working on a way to track
stolen *Thuja plicata.*  (A student at the university I attended up until
this past year was working on this for her undergraduate project.) Wood is
checked by extracting and comparing DNA samples with that of trees believed
to be stolen or illegally logged.  PCR with suitable primers (many have
been attempted and proven unsuccessful unitl recently) can be used to
ampify small amounts of plant DNA.  Dr. White recently won an award for
this.  This is not a new idea, but it has not been proven to be very
successful until now.



Colin Kaneen

At 16:39 99/06/24 +0200, you wrote:
>One application of microchips is where conservation authorities
>embed these into trunks of Encephalartos spp. growing in the
>wild, in order to trace illegally removed specimens back to the
>original population, should they appear in the horticultural market.
>
>The Northern Province dept. of Environment - Biodiversity unit
>bio at cis.co.za
>should be able to provide further details in this regard. As far
>as I am aware,  in some cases permits for legally owned
>plants are cross-referenced to an embedded microchip as well.
>