Scientists taught spinach plants to send emails? Not exactly

For years, a rumor has circulated online that scientists taught spinach how to send emails. According to social media posts, researchers engineered the leafy green vegetable to detect explosives in soil and then wirelessly send alerts via email about the devices.

In late August 2025, for example, a Facebook user wrote (archived): “Scientists recently taught spinach plants to send emails. They were engineered to detect explosives in soil — and alert researchers wirelessly. Nature + tech = unbelievable potential.”

(Facebook user Cristian Marquez)

Versions of the claim also appeared on Instagram (archived) and YouTube (archived) around the same time. It circulated online as early as November 2016 (archived) and was even featured on comedian Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show” in February 2021 (archived).

The rumor about spinach’s alleged tech skills was based on real scientific research, though it was missing important context. Also, some social media posts (like the above-displayed Facebook post) misleadingly framed the scientific discovery as “recent” in 2025 when the in-question experiment actually occurred in 2016.

Multiple news media outlets, such as Euronews and The Telegraph, published articles about the research in February 2021.

Those articles cited a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-authored (MIT) paper titled (archived): “Nitroaromatic detection and infrared communication from wild-type plants using plant nanobionics.” The peer-reviewed scientific journal “Nature Materials” published the paper on Oct. 31, 2016. That same day, MIT published a news release about the work (archived) with the headline: “Nanobionic spinach plants can detect explosives.”

The paper’s authors did find a way to use spinach to detect explosive compounds in soil. However, the spinach itself was just one element in a multi-faceted, intricate system that sent an email notification to the team of researchers. 

Also, it’s worth noting the researchers did not prompt the leafy green to perform the feat outside of the specific conditions of the experiment.

Michael Strano, an MIT chemical engineering professor who led the research, confirmed via email that the claim was inaccurate, noting there was no “teaching” involved. Strano emphasized that the spinach was just one piece of a larger system.

In short, the claim was an oversimplification of genuine research; therefore, we did not rate the claim and provided necessary context below. 

Breaking down the research

The MIT news release, which provided a condensed explanation of the “Nature Materials” paper, outlined exactly how researchers used the spinach plants to send emails. One segment read:

[The] plants were designed to detect chemical compounds known as nitroaromatics, which are often used in landmines and other explosives. When one of these chemicals is present in the groundwater sampled naturally by the plant, carbon nanotubes embedded in the plant leaves emit a fluorescent signal that can be read with an infrared camera. The camera can be attached to a small computer similar to a smartphone, which then sends an email to the user.

In other words, the spinach plants served as an intermediary between chemicals in explosive compounds and an infrared camera attached to a computer. Researchers designed the plants’ leaves to emit a fluorescent signal to the camera when they detected the specific chemicals, and then the camera and computer sent an email based on this signal.

MIT’s official YouTube channel posted the below video, which outlined the paper’s findings and included footage of the spinach plant infused with carbon nanotubes (the structures that allowed the plants to emit the fluorescent signal).

Strano said the research, for the first time, demonstrated how scientists can convert parts of living plants into digital information. The project inspired him to make new tools that can detect chemical signals generated by plants themselves by using a similar system, and those inventions could help farmers monitor crops.

For more reading on alleged scientific inventions, Snopes once investigated a claim about researchers at Purdue University creating the whitest shade of white paint and an image supposedly showing a basketball covered in “the world’s blackest substance.”