Plants are getting an upgrade

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that food production must rise by 70% by 2050 in order to feed the entire world's population. Agriculture will need to innovate to accomplish this, and technology is a vital component of that.

Farmers have benefited from recent developments in crop monitoring, including the use of sensor-equipped drones and tractors combined with low-resolution satellite data. Wearable plant sensors, on the other hand, will advance this monitoring, so that's the area of innovation we'll be focusing on.

Small sensors known as wearable plants can be attached to crop plants to track temperature, humidity, wetness, and nutrient levels continually. Using this information, farmers may increase yields, cut waste, find disease early on, and lessen their impact on the environment. Wearable plant sensors may transform crop management and productivity, despite ongoing hurdles.

By interacting with plants directly, wearable plant sensors with wireless connection, sustainable data collecting, and widespread deployment give people a better understanding of the environment. This improves the data we have access to and contributes to the development of a novel approach to numerous issues in agricultural production.

Prelude

Emerging plant diseases are a serious threat to both human life and the natural ecosystem since they are brought on by infections, pests, and climate change. New sensor technologies to monitor plant health, anticipate, and track plant diseases in real time are desired to reduce crop loss owing to diverse biotic and abiotic pressures. Electronics that can be worn for monitoring human health have lately been created. Wearable electronics are just beginning to be used in agriculture and plant research, though. Sensors will be directly applied to the surfaces of plant organs like leaves and stems thanks to wearable technologies.

The sensors' purpose is to profile several phenotypic biomarkers and micro environmental characteristics while converting bio signals to electric readout for data analytics. According to their functional categories—plant growth sensors, physiology and microclimate sensors, chemical sensors, and multifunctional sensors—recent advancements in wearable plant sensors are used as per requirements. 

New strategies for agriculture are essential as a number of things come into play and are affecting the outcomes. Climate changes like variations in annual rainfall, waves of temperature, modifications in pathogens, global Co2 changes, soil salinization – which negatively impact crop production and compromise food security.

THE SHIFT

Plant protection is a general term that refers to a wide range of integrated techniques used to prevent yield loss brought on by stress from the environment and pests (such as pathogens, nematodes, insects, rodents, weeds, etc.), which has been crucial in increasing agricultural productivity, food quality, and economic benefit.

The harsh weather circumstances and frequently occurring pests that accompany the modern agricultural intensification have an impact on plant growth, necessitating dependable methods for on-site monitoring to confirm the efficacy of implemented plant protection techniques. In contrast to those traditional instrument-centered methods, recent advancements in (bio)sensing techniques have offered fresh ideas and workable platforms to track plant health and agrochemical residual levels. These platforms have appealing advantages like low cost, high accuracy, miniaturized instrument configuration, noninvasive treatment, simple operation, and wireless data transmission.

Particularly, the quick advancement of wearable sensing technology enhances the field applicability and operational simplicity of (bio)sensors, showing great promise as the next-generation monitoring techniques that are urgently required in the burgeoning trend of agricultural mechanization and intellectualization. The next step is to research how modern wearable devices are being used to monitor plant health and identify agrochemicals (particularly pesticides), with the goal of generating more innovative ideas and approaches to improve plant protection and assist the sustainable growth of modern agriculture.

Agricultural innovation is crucial

Utilizing sensor-equipped tractors and low-resolution satellite data, recent advancements in crop monitoring have already helped farmers increase productivity. Wearable plant sensors, which are small devices that can be attached to crops and continuously track temperature, humidity, moisture, and nutrient levels, are the new frontier. This real-time information can improve production, cut waste, spot disease early on, and have a minimal negative environmental impact. Wearable plant sensors may yet change agricultural management and productivity, despite ongoing obstacles.

Plants can be equipped with wearable plant sensors to keep track of their health and identify any inadequacies. Using bio signals to help provide deeper insights into plant health is an innovation that was previously time-consuming when done using conventional approaches.

Why is this device revolutionary?

Food is a crucial part of our lives, and agtech (sustainable agricultural technology) is evolving as more and more industries are going digital. These kinds of developments can significantly benefit the global agricultural sector and assist specialists in concentrating on urgent problems like biodiversity destruction brought on by the encroachment of agriculture.

When new technologies emerge, particularly in agtech like wearable plant sensors, a few questions come to mind:

What issues in agriculture do we want to solve with this innovation?

What economic advantages do farmers and the industry stand to gain from the introduction of this technology?

How does this technology increase production in this crucial industry while resolving the issues that now exist?

Crop loss is a recurring problem that reduces production in the agriculture industry and will require systemic initiatives to resolve. A critical first step in assuring food production and minimizing food waste is to address crop loss. To resolve this issue amicably, cooperation between the government and the agricultural industry is crucial.

How wearable plant sensors help?

Plant growth is accompanied by a number of intricate and delicate processes, including photosynthesis, transpiration, and respiration. Additionally, plants are susceptible to a number of additional environmental factors. Plant growth is negatively impacted when environmentally harmful substances come into contact with the plant. Visual examination and soil testing, which are traditional methods of crop monitoring, would not be able to immediately identify small changes in plant health and biotic stresses that the crops are experiencing in the early phases. Furthermore, time-consuming and tedious traditional methods of plant health assessment are used.

How does a wearable plant sensor work? Crop loss & Challenges  

Wearable plant sensors can be attached to plants close to their roots, leaves, or stems for plant health monitoring. The wearable plant sensor analyzes the optimal conditions the plants require to thrive and alerts the user if the conditions are unfavorable, preventing the plant from losing production.

Farmers now have real-time access to information about their crops, which facilitates the streamlined development of crop-saving strategies. There is also less need for manual intervention because these sensors do the continual monitoring and assessment without being intrusive. One of the biggest advancements in the agricultural industry is the use of this technology to minimize plant productivity loss. Food wastage affects this industry severely and persistently, from the production process to the transportation and storage of grains. By identifying a crop's health before it's too late to rescue it, this sensor can avoid crop loss and offers greater evaluation accuracy when compared to more conventional techniques.

The expense of the device is one of the obstacles preventing it from becoming widely used. The cost of installing and maintaining these devices is high. Farmers and other agricultural workers at the grassroots level must comprehend and acquire the skills necessary to comprehend the data being presented to them by this gadget.

Key Attributes of Plant Wearables

It will be crucial to use sensitivity, suitable materials, and durability.

Because changes in many plant-health indicators (like stem flow, pH, and glucose levels) can be very subtle, wearable plant sensors must have a high degree of sensitivity in order to be widely used in agriculture. Even a small amount of error can result in inaccurate readings. The placement of the sensors is also crucial; the best distance between sensor units on a plant needs to be determined for each application in order to improve accuracy and save expense.

Depending on the type of plant and the surrounding environment, a different flexible material choice may be made for making wearable plant sensors. Normal plant functions, such as the exchange of chemicals with the environment, must not be hampered by these sensors.

Additionally, they must be able to work in challenging situations, such as those with high temperature and humidity variations, torrential downpours, prolonged exposure to sunshine, brisk winds, and chemical exposure from pesticides, among others. Wearable plant sensors obviously need a power supply, but combining solar energy technologies can increase their lifespan and reduce the frequency of battery replacements.

Cybernetics in Agriculture

Farmers may use feedback loop adaptation to navigate drones or determine their requirement for fertilizer.

To create complex systems that can self-regulate through feedback loops and adapt to environmental changes, the multidisciplinary science of cybernetics integrates aspects from mathematics, engineering, biology, and psychology. Cybernetics is used in precision agriculture to track crop growth, equipment performance, and environmental variables using real-time feedback data from sensors and other sources. As a result, producers can modify inputs like water and fertilizer to enhance efficiency, improve production, and minimize waste.

Cybernetic models can also forecast how changes in the environment or inputs will impact crop growth in the future, enabling farmers to determine the inputs required to maximize harvests. Additionally, by making it possible to follow crops from the field to the warehouse and beyond, cybernetics can help supply-chain management. Cybernetic models are able to forecast demand, manage storage and delivery, and guarantee that food is supplied at its freshest. Cybernetic principles are also used by precision agriculture technology like autonomous vehicles and drones for navigation and control; the information gathered from sensors prompts decisions about where to go and what to do.

Indicators of Plant Health

You can measure proteins and gases to determine your health.

For an understanding of plant growth, some markers are essential. Disease detection and identification frequently involve the utilization of chemicals produced by plants, such as volatile organic compounds, DNA, RNA, proteins, and metabolites.

It is also possible to measure the gases that plants release into the environment (during transpiration, respiration, and photosynthesis, for example) in order to get data on their health and development. These indicators can be continuously monitored without any harm by wearable plant sensors.

The ideal wearable plant sensor incorporates multichannel sensor arrays, which can detect numerous signals concurrently while also distinctly separating each from the other. However, plant health cannot be effectively assessed using simply a single indicator.

Biomarker sensing can be integrated with other sensor capabilities, such as the measurement of deformation, humidity, and temperature, to examine how plants react to various stresses. These arranged, multimodal sensors can offer the most accurate evaluation of plant health.

Tech for Greater Food Security

The world's expanding population can be fed through precision agriculture.

Worldwide, there is a serious problem with food security. In 2020, 811 million people worldwide experienced hunger, and COVID-19 only made things worse in many areas, according to the United Nations. Increasing productivity, decreasing food waste and loss, giving farmers more financial resources, and facilitating their access to markets are among the techniques being used to promote food security.

One component of a larger arsenal of precision agricultural tools being used in this effort is wearable plant sensors.

Precision farming can help increase yields, decrease waste, and safeguard the environment from overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. It can also make the best use of fertilizers and other inputs to increase the amount of critical nutrients in food. This is especially important in areas where malnutrition is a serious issue.

To address the core causes of hunger and develop a more equitable and sustainable food system, coordinated and collaborative efforts by governments, international organizations, civil society, and the commercial sector are needed.

Precision Agriculture

Machine learning can be used in conjunction with real-time condition monitoring to do analysis.

Precision agriculture is a novel method of farming that reduces waste, increases yields, and has a positive impact on the environment. It makes use of data and analytics to keep an eye on crop development, soil quality, and other environmental parameters so that the usage of water, fertilizer, and pesticides can be maximized. One of the technologies involved is wearable plant sensors; others include drones, tractor-mounted sensors, and machine learning algorithms. One of the newest technologies in use, wearable plant sensors, can track factors including temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and nutrient levels in real-time.

They can be supplemented with yield monitors on tractors, which track harvested amounts, and drones that provide farmers with precise photos that allow them to check crop health and highlight areas that require care. In the meantime, patterns and trends that are revealed by machine learning algorithms that analyze the enormous volumes of data gathered by these other technologies might assist guide crop management decisions. In the end, precision farming can increase food security and safety by minimizing the use of dangerous chemicals and guaranteeing that crops are delivered at their freshest.

The Internet of Things in Agriculture

Networked equipment can increase crop yields and cut down on waste.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a huge network of interconnected things that can connect to the internet thanks to sensors and software. Today's billions of connected devices range from home appliances and smart watches to automobiles. The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform precision agriculture, which uses cutting-edge technologies to enhance agricultural yields, decrease waste, and improve efficiency.

GPS devices that provide precise location data for mapping crop growth; drones outfitted with cameras and other sensors to provide high-resolution images; soil sensors that can measure moisture in addition to temperature and nutrient levels; yield monitors mounted on harvesting equipment; and, most recently, wearable plant sensors that can continuously monitor the health of individual plants. These enable inventory tracking, improve irrigation and nutrient systems, remotely monitor farming equipment, and detect when water or fertilizer are required. The Internet of Things (IoT) can improve overall agricultural supply-chain management by assisting farmers in taking control of the entire food production process. IoT has problems as well. Concerns about data security and privacy, problems with device and system interoperability, and a requirement for new skills to manage and analyze collected data are all present.

Way Forward

Plant wearable sensors have sparked a lot of curiosity over the past ten years.

This is a significant advance because conventional instruments are expensive, rigid, and unable to be used in fields where, for instance, crop health monitoring is essential. Utilizing these technology has allowed various Research and Development organizations to monitor microclimate, plant physiology, and growth.

There are still certain issues with wearable technology development for plants that need to be resolved through continued study, such as wearable sensor self-power technology, plant-compatible and -insensitive materials, and wearable sensors for in-field and indoor applications. The efforts of Lan et al. and Hsu et al. have successfully overcome the first issue, but technology for the other two challenges have not yet been offered.

Compatible materials are crucial for accurately understanding plant physiology because any abnormal contact between wearable materials and plants can stress them, producing unwanted signals.

Wearable sensor applications in the field or at home are very useful for the agriculture industry as well as indoor and outdoor plant care.

Wearable Sensor Intellectual Property

Jerrah Edwards, the acting assistant regional director of the Western USPTO region, gave a presentation titled "Intellectual property (IP) Strategies Wearable Technology Companies Should Consider" at the Wear 2022 Conference. While concentrating on wearables especially, the ideas are applicable to any technology or sensing field. She gave a general introduction of the several categories of intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, as well as discussed the need of IP protection for innovators and business owners.

Important actions in an IP strategy include

Access the IP assets of your business and determine priorities.

Understand your competition

What are the opportunities for growth and the rate of innovation?

Choose the most effective IP protection measures.

Make a plan, set some goals, and carry it out

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Effectual’s PRECISSION AGRICULTURE – PLANT WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH FRAMEWORK is a deep dive into this ecosystem and shall help you understand the intricacies of this nascent innovative domain with insights backed with credible data sources. Some ways we can help include, but not limited to - Performing any previous art or freedom to operate searches to help you better grasp the environment surrounding your invention or business endeavors. If certain methods of IP protection are more appropriate for your technological or business goals, we can help you strategize effectively to plan for future & in making continuous innovation a part of your working model.