Plant patches can continuously monitor crop diseases

"We invented a wearable sensor that monitors plant stress and disease in a non-invasive way by measuring the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants," Wei Qingshan, co-corresponding author of the research paper Say

Current methods for detecting plant stress or disease include collecting plant tissue samples and conducting laboratory tests

Plants release different combinations of VOCs in different environments

Wei said: "Our technology continuously monitors the factory's VOC emissions and will not cause harm to the factory

The rectangular patch is 30 mm long and consists of a flexible material that contains graphene-based sensors and flexible silver nanowires

The researchers tested a prototype of the device on tomato plants

It takes longer to detect the presence of malaria parasites

"This is not much faster than the onset of visual symptoms of late blight," Wei said

"Our prototype can already detect 13 different plant VOCs with high accuracy, allowing users to develop custom sensor arrays that focus on the stress and diseases that growers think are most relevant," said Zhu Yong, co-corresponding author of the paper, North Carolina Andrew A.

"It is also important that the cost of materials is quite low," Zhu said

Researchers are currently working on developing next-generation patches that can monitor temperature, humidity and other environmental variables as well as VOCs

Journal Reference :

1. Zheng Li, Yuxuan Liu, Oindrila Hossain, Rajesh Paul, Shanshan Yao, Shuang Wu, Jean B.