Agentic AI accelerates search for crops that can harvest critical minerals

For too long, the United States has relied on foreign sources for most of the raw materials powering its technological future: the essential minerals in every smartphone, battery pack and semiconductor. What if one answer to the supply crisis isn't buried in a mine shaft but growing quietly in a field? Scientists are betting on a resource-efficient, highly effective strategy: using engineered plants and symbiotic microbes to absorb critical minerals directly from the Earth in a process called phytomining.