Plantenna Demonstrator: Sensing early signs of drought stress

How do plant respond to drought? At what point do they start to experience stress that, for instance, affects the quality of their fruits? To what extent can they recover after a drought period? These are important questions to answer in times of increasing drought like the one we’re experiencing this summer.

In Plantenna, a 4TU collaboration project, we are developing novel sensors to detect early signs of stress in plants. The aim is to make the sensors low-cost and fully autonomous for easy application in the field.

This summer, we’re putting the sensors to the test: ultrasound microphones, radars, a stomatoscope and many other measurement devices are installed in a tomato greenhouse at Delphy Improvement Center in Bleiswijk. We’re conducting a series of drought experiments to test the sensors’ capabilities. But we learn a lot more: 3D temperature measurements at very high (25cm) resolution will show the heat distribution in the greenhouse. A dozen soil moisture sensors combined with sap flow and leaf temperatures will tell us whether the plants can "sweat" enough to keep themselves cool.

Thus, we intend to obtain a better understanding of the plants’ response to drought stress. At the same time, we evaluate the usefulness of the newly developed Plantenna sensing techniques for monitoring plant health in greenhouses and fields. In the future, networks of these sensors can help farmers to protect their crops against drought, to ensure food supplies and prevent famine.

A major challenge has proven to be to keep the researchers cool during all these activities: temperatures at the top of the tomato canopy are rising to almost 40C at midday, quite a test to the team’s heat resilience!

For more information please contact:
Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis
Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Watermanagement
j.a.e.tenveldhuis@tudelft.nl