This Tiny Drone Can Pollinate Flowers Like a Bee
A Japanese researcher’s adhesive gel picks up and drops pollen grains on contact.
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Innovator Eijiro Miyako
Age 37
Senior researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan
Form and function
Miyako has invented an adhesive gel that collects flowers’ pollen grains and deposits them on other flowers upon contact. His goal is to offer farmers a tool to complement, not replace, bees and other natural pollinators.