Smart farming techniques are key to tackling growing food insecurity through sustainable farming practices. This entails the rapid development of advanced technologies that can enable farmers to give their plants (or animals) the precise treatment they need.
A new tool from scientists at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology does exactly that, helping farmers with early diagnosis and real-time plant health monitoring in field conditions.
The useful device entails a portable leaf-clip optical sensor that can monitor whether a plant is under stress. It does this by gathering data on the plant’s chemistry, such as gauging its levels of nitrogen, a deficiency of which can be linked to premature leaf deterioration and loss of yield.
On top of measuring nitrogen levels in plants, the device can also be used to detect levels of other plant stressors such as drought, heat and cold stress, saline stress, and light stress. The wide range of plant stressors it can detect and their simplicity and speed make them ideal for field use by farmers to prevent food loss.
“While we have focused on the early and specific diagnosis of nitrogen deficiency using the leaf-clip sensor, we were able to measure peaks from other metabolites that are also clearly observed in popular vegetables such as Kailan, Lettuce, Choy Sum, Pak Choi, and Spinach,” says study co-author Dr. Chung Hao Huang.
According to the team, their findings could prove incredibly useful in helping farmers maximize crop yield while ensuring minimal environmental impacts, such as minimizing pollution of aquatic ecosystems by reducing nitrogen runoff and groundwater contamination.
