WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Office of Indiana State Chemist at Purdue University is urging Hoosiers, who might receive unsolicited packages of unidentified seeds in the mail from China, not to plant or dispose of them.
Anyone who receives a package is asked not to open the packet and to mail it and any packaging materials to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
“It might be tempting to put this into some soil to see what happens, but there’s a lot of damage that it can cause,” said Office of Indiana State Chemist administrator Don Robison. “We don’t know what these seeds are, and there is potential for doing harm. The last thing we want is to spread a weed, invasive species, or disease, and that’s a real risk if people plant these or throw them in the garbage.”
