Boon for bonsai

a microchip is helping people in Japan to deal with a crime wave that has hit the ancient Japanese art of bonsai. Bonsai is a Japanese practice of cultivating artificially dwarfed plants or small trees. Thieves have been stealing beautiful miniature trees that are very costly and take many years to grow. Growers and collectors are now electronically tagging the trees to provide them a security net (Spectrum , September/October 1997).

The method was first devised by scientists at the Datalog of Weybridge, Surrey, uk. The researchers initially developed the technology to guard motorcycles. Now, a bonsai enthusiast Martin Unwin has brought about some modifications in the technique to make it appropriate for protecting the trees. He is setting up the first nation-wide computer register of tagged bonsai trees. The minute tags are similar to a small carpet tack.

Datatag transponders are a passive radio frequency identification device. They do not contain any internal power source and can send an identification code when interrogated by a special scanning. The transponder or