The genetic engineering techniques to create flowering plants to serve as environmental monitors have been established by researchers from Suntory and Kobe University, Japan. Flowers will have different colours when the soil is contaminated with chemicals or compounds that act as endocrine disrupters and similar tecniques could be used for detecting other toxic compounds such as dioxin. Suntory, plans to have the technology ready for commercial marketing of plants for low-cost continual monitoring of the environment in five to six years. Grown around the grounds of a factory, the flowers would beautify the area while detecting chemical contamination. In one technique, a gene responsible for the synthesis of a purple-coloured pigment was inserted into a pink-flowering strain of Verbena, which made the flowers purple. In the other technique, a gene that can function as a sensor to detect endocrine disrupters in the soil was inserted into Arabidopsis thaliana, a common experimental plant. If these two genes can be linked in Verbena, then it should be possible to create a plant that normally produces pink flowers but purple flowers in contaminated contaminated. A similar technique could be used to create flowers that detect other toxic compounds, such as dioxins. "FlowerTech" www.hortiworld.nl