April 1, 2004—Graduate students at the University of Washington in Seattle have gone out on a limb with a project that involves embedding RFID transponders in trees. The idea might not be as wild as it sounds.

The university’s Precision Forestry Cooperative was set up with funding from the state legislature to use advanced technology to improve

A transponder embedded in a sapling

conservation techniques in the forestry industry. In 2002, after two years of preparation, students embedded the tags in two-year-old saplings to see if RFID could be used to identify trees that have been genetically modified to grow more rapidly. The trees are planted and monitored. Eventually their seeds are harvested to create a new generation of faster-growing trees. Big money was invested in the genetic modification, so the seeds of the original saplings are very valuable.

“We have used plastic ribbons to mark trees, but the trees are often vandalized by hunters and others,” says Gerard Schreuder, acting director of the cooperative. “Embedded RFID tags are not visible, and they remain in the tree throughout its life.”

Students embedded a 134.2 kHz glass-encapsulated transponder from Texas Instruments in each sapling. Each tag has 80 bits of read-write memory, which can be used to store a serial number and other data about the sapling. A scientist with a handheld computer equipped with a reader can go to an area of the forest where genetically modified saplings have been planted, scan the tag and gather data on the tree in the field.