Emerging Wearable Sensors for Plant Health Monitoring

Abstract

Emerging plant diseases, caused by pathogens, pests, and climate change, are critical threats to not only the natural ecosystem but also human life. To mitigate crop loss due to various biotic and abiotic stresses, new sensor technologies to monitor plant health, predict, and track plant diseases in real time are desired. Wearable electronics have recently been developed for human health monitoring. However, the application of wearable electronics to agriculture and plant science is in its infancy. Wearable technologies mean that the sensors will be directly placed on the surfaces of plant organs such as leaves and stems. The sensors are designed to detect the status of plant health by profiling various trait biomarkers and microenvironmental parameters, transducing bio-signals to electric readout for data analytics. In this perspective, the recent progress in wearable plant sensors is summarized and they are categorized by the functionality, namely plant growth sensors, physiology, and microclimate sensors, chemical sensors, and multifunctional sensors. The design and mechanism of each type of wearable sensors are discussed and their applications to address the current challenges of precision agriculture are highlighted. Finally, challenges and perspectives for the future development of wearable plant sensors are presented.

Electrochemical Sensors for Sustainable Precision Agriculture—A Review

“…In addition to nutrients and plant hormones, a variety of other parameters can be used to monitor plant growth status and physiological conditions. Plants have evolved signaling networks that trigger appropriate physiological processes as a response to changing environmental conditions ( Lee et al, 2021 ). Detecting plant stress markers based on chemical properties (such as plant signaling molecules) may help diagnose specific environmental or biological stresses in plants.…”

“…Electrochemical sensors that detect target materials in various ways can be applied to wide fields such as industry, medicine, agriculture, and the environment, and it is expected that active research in the agricultural field will proceed in the future ( Lu et al, 2020 ) ( Lan et al, 2020 ) ( Im et al, 2018 ) (J. J. Kim et al, 2020 ) ( Lee et al, 2021 ).…”

Recent Advances in Flexible Sensors and Their Applications

“…Compared to the existing conventional electronic sensors, the flexible sensor has shown high biocompatibility and real-time monitoring, as well as further advantages. They are the most extensively utilized in human health monitoring and human-machine interaction [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] owing to their simple structural design, which converts physical motion, including compression, bending, tension, shear, stress, and strain, into electrical signals. These kinds of sensors can detect human quotidian activities, including joints and muscle movement, respiration, pulses, etc.…”

A Facile Liquid Alloy Wetting Enhancing Strategy on Super‐Hydrophobic Lotus Leaves for Plant‐Hybrid System Implementation

“…[2,6,7] The emerging plant-hybrid system, integrated with epidermal electronics, offers an elegant approach to connect plants to man-made digitalized technology, and hence opens us great prospects to solve such grand challenges. [6,8,9] contain mechanical pressure or stress, laser heating, high voltage, or toxic chemical reagent, which may damage plants and are not suitable for printing on lotus leaves, either. The lack of a feasible integration method severely constraints liquid alloy plant-hybrid system implantation on such plants with the super-hydrophobic surface.…”

“…Information on plant growth, physiology, microclimate, humidity, and chemicals can be obtained by plant wearable sensors. [8,9] Native plant adenosine triphosphate was converted to chemiluminescence for indirect lighting. [19] Wind energy was harvested at the living plants cuticle by triboelectric mechanism.…”