Plant leaves with sensors represent water shortage
MIT engineers created sensors that can be printed onto plant leaves and reveal when the plants are experiencing a water shortage.
But gives farmers an early warning when their crops are in danger, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.
“This appears to be the earliest indicator of drought that we have for agricultural applications,” Strano says. “It’s hard to get this information any other way. You can put sensors into the soil, or you can do satellite imaging and mapping. But you never really know what a particular plant is detecting as the water potential.”
Transpiration process
The new MIT sensor takes advantage of plants’ stomata small pores in the surface of a leaf that allow water to evaporate. As water evaporates from the leaf, water pressure in the plant falls. Allowing it to draw water up from the soil through a process called transpiration.
“People already knew that stomata respond to light, to carbon dioxide concentration, to drought, but now we have been able to monitor it continuously,” Koman says. “Previous methods were unable to produce this kind of information.”
Researchers used an ink made of carbon nanotubes and tiny hollow tubes of carbon to develop sensor that conduct electricity dissolved in an organic compound called sodium dodecyl sulfate, does not damage the stomata.
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