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Professor Bas van de Wiel, researcher at the 4TU Plantenna programme, tells BNR news radio about the FruitFrost project in which sensors measure the temperature of plants and small windmills keep the soil frost-free. A great help for growers and farmers who now have to get out of bed to save the plants. In the near future, sensors will automatically indicate whether help is needed and turn it on themselves.

dr. S. Dutta from TU Delft presented his talk at the iMNC held in Utrecht on 10 December 2019, where he discussed about the applications of low-cost optoelectronics for continuous and non-invasive near infrared reflectance sensing on leaves, which can reveal the structural information of the leaf mesophyll tissue and its dynamic response to water-stress. With his personal research interest in silicon optoelectronics, he calls for large-scale integration of these sensors in CMOS with silicon LED and silicon photodetector that can operate near 1100 nm wavelength.

D. Cynthia Maan from TU Delft presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Agriculture and Forestry in October 2019, where she and her co-authors studied the coupled action of water uptake and root development of maize in potting soil under greenhouse conditions. Synchronous realtime measurements of the co-evolving soil moisture fields and root distributions were performed. Understanding of the feedback loops between the soil moisture distribution and root development opens new pathways for boosting natural adaptation and climate resilience of plants.  

The abstract can be found below: Plantenna: towards a network of vegetation-integrated sensors for plant and environmental monitoring

The press release of Plantenna can be found at: https://www.4tu.nl/en/news/plantenna-en.pdf https://www.4tu.nl/en/news/!/84378/awarding_hightech/

In December 2017, the four universities of technology called upon their scientists to submit joint research proposals within the umbrella theme 'High tech for a sustainable future'. Plantenna is one of the five accepted proposals within this call. A  key component of the project will be the development of sensor technology that will collect information within plants about the condition of the crop and its immediate environment.