Bean Pods
The way in which bean and pea pods go about protecting their cargo during growth can teach humans a lot about efficient and sustainable packaging, as well as natural pest control.
Biomimetic Designs
Bedbug Traps:
As a safety mechanism to protect itself, kidney beans leaves are able to stop biting insects in their tracks through microscopic hairs. Given that bedbug infestations have recently been on the rise in the US, scientists are currently developing a more natural deterrent of these pests by molding traps after kidney bean leaves. Leaves quickly dry out if detached from the plant, so scientists use negative molding and polymers of live plants to mimic the leaves' structures. As of now, the prototypes are only able to catch bedbugs temporarily, but with further investigation of the exact mechanisms of kidney bean leaves, scientists are hopeful to produce a highly effective, all-natural method of ridding buildings of bedbugs.
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Biodegradable Toothpaste Capsules:
To reduce society's reliance on plastic, Cornell students designed a more sustainable method of packaging toothpaste. Rice-paper casing separate single-use pods of toothpaste that are then packaged in a sturdier shell, made of recycled ocean plastics. By adopting the hardier woody pods of Sea Beans as the external packaging, Snow Pods could evolve even further, switching out the re-purposed plastic for a durable yet biodegradable shell instead.
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The Science Behind Bean Pods
Keeping kidney bean plants in the house has been practiced by people in Eastern Europe’s Balkan region for years as prevention method for bedbugs, trapping bedbugs like a natural fly paper. It wasn't until relatively recently though that scientists discovered the reason was due to microscopic hairs on the surface of kidney bean leaves, called trichomes. When trichomes were originally discovered, scientists believed the hairs simply tangled the bugs to stop them. It wasn't until recently when scientists used a scanning electron microscope to discover that trichomes basically impale the pests as they walked, rather than entangle them.
As far as the pod development, known as embryogenesis, legumes form layered capsules to efficiently store seeds and proteins. Similar to how onions develop in epidermal cells for layers to protect against fungi and viruses, peas have fibrous layers to protect developing seeds against pests and pathogens. Recent studies have even revealed that signals originating from the pod may also act to coordinate grain filling and regulate the reallocation of reserves from damaged seeds to those that have retained viability. The reason for segmentation of the beans is so that one pod can contain multiple seeds, conserving resources. Once the seeds reach maturation, the bivalve pod splits along its seam, and the contents are released to be spread.
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Spark your Imagination: Explore More Articles
Bean Leave Spikes preventing Bedbugs
The Role of Pods in Seed Development
'Snow Pods' Biomimicry Challenge
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