At some point in the next few days an amateur gardener in Geneva will dig a shallow hole in his lawn and inter two pairs of fresh white cotton underpants. He will have to hope they are not late bloomers.
A thousand people are planting identical pairs of pants in vegetable patches, flowerbeds, meadows and farmland across Switzerland in a mass experiment to measure the health of the country’s soil.
A few months later the buried smalls will be unearthed, photographed and scrutinised by scientists at Zurich University for signs of decomposition.
The researchers will also examine the surrounding soil for traces of DNA to work out what microbes are eating away at the underwear.
The underlying idea is serious: the team wants to create