This is the

scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Humans can spread disease by sneezing,

but less well known is the wheat plant's ability

to do something strangely similar from its leaves.

It's basically analogous to a human's needs in terms of you have this very fast and sudden expulsion of droplets that contain the disease or

pathogen inside of it and they kind of get like thrown away from the

surface. Jonathan Barrico, a mechanical engineer at Virginia Tech. He and his team were studying the ability of wheat plants to expel spores of a common

pathogen, the wheat rust fungus from their leaves via this unusual mechanism.

So they inoculated wheat plants with the disease, created dew on the plant's leaves, and then studied the ensuing action with high-speed microscopy. Here's what they saw. The leaves are extremely hydrophobic, meaning water beads up to minimize contact with the surface.

And when two or more drops touch, energy gets released in the form of a catapulting action,

which sneezes the droplets into the air several millimeters above the leaf surface.

The droplets can then be picked up by light breezes or simply fall and spread to other plants.

The process is surprisingly effective at launching spores.

The researchers figure each leaf can launch a hundred spores per hour during a morning due.

The results and photos of the jumping drops are in the journal of the Royal Society interface.

Next, Barico and his team want to see what happens if they spray stuff on the leaves that changes the way due forms.

So if we change the wetability of the leaves,

but they're no longer super hydrophobic,

now the dewdrops will be unable to jump when they grow.

They just sort of will cling to the leaf surface

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