Embrapa Instrumentation, São Carlos (SP) 13560-970, Brazil.
Forschungszentrum Jülich / IBG-2: Plant Sciences, Jülich (NRW) 52425, Germany.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Feb 20;20(4):1166. doi: 10.3390/s20041166.
Investigating the growth behavior of plant root systems as a function of soil water is considered an important information for the study of root physiology. A non-invasive tool based on electromagnetic wave transmittance in the microwave frequency range, operating close to 4.8 GHz, was developed using microstrip patch antennas to determine the volumetric moisture of soil in rhizoboxes. Antennas were placed on both sides of the rhizobox and, using a vector network analyzer, measured the S parameters. The dispersion parameter S (dB) was also used to show the effect of different soil types and temperature on the measurement. In addition, system sensitivity, reproducibility and repeatability were evaluated. The quantitative results of the soil moisture, measured in rhizoboxes, presented in this paper, demonstrate that the microwave technique using microstrip patch antennas is a reliable, non-invasive and accurate system, and has shown potentially promising applications for measurement of rhizobox-based root phenotyping.
研究植物根系在土壤水分作用下的生长行为被认为是根系生理学研究的重要信息。本研究开发了一种基于微波频率范围内电磁波透射的非侵入式工具,工作频率接近 4.8GHz,使用微带贴片天线来确定根盒中土壤的体积含水量。天线放置在根盒的两侧,使用矢量网络分析仪测量 S 参数。还使用离散参数 S(dB)来显示不同土壤类型和温度对测量的影响。此外,评估了系统的灵敏度、重现性和可重复性。本文介绍的根盒中土壤水分的定量结果表明,使用微带贴片天线的微波技术是一种可靠、非侵入式和精确的系统,并已显示出在基于根盒的根系表型测量方面有潜在的应用前景。