Lo Presti Daniela, Cimini Sara, De Tommasi Francesca, Massaroni Carlo, Cinti Stefano, De Gara Laura, Schena Emiliano
Unit of Measurements and Biomedical Instrumentation, Department of Engineering, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Vial Alvaro del Portillo 21, 00128 Roma, Italy.
Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Campus Bio-Medico, Via Alvaro del Portillo 200, 00128 Rome, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Mar 1;24(5):1611. doi: 10.3390/s24051611.
The safeguarding of plant health is vital for optimizing crop growth practices, especially in the face of the biggest challenges of our generation, namely the environmental crisis and the dramatic changes in the climate. Among the many innovative tools developed to address these issues, wearable sensors have recently been proposed for monitoring plant growth and microclimates in a sustainable manner. These systems are composed of flexible matrices with embedded sensing elements, showing promise in revolutionizing plant monitoring without being intrusive. Despite their potential benefits, concerns arise regarding the effects of the long-term coexistence of these devices with the plant surface. Surprisingly, a systematic analysis of their influence on plant physiology is lacking. This study aims to investigate the effect of the color and geometric features of flexible matrices on two key plant physiological functions: photosynthesis and transpiration. Our findings indicate that the negative effects associated with colored substrates, as identified in recent research, can be minimized by holing the matrix surface with a percentage of voids of 15.7%. This approach mitigates interference with light absorption and reduces water loss to a negligible extent, making our work one of the first pioneering efforts in understanding the intricate relationship between plant wearables' features and plant health.
植物健康的维护对于优化作物生长实践至关重要，尤其是在面对我们这一代人面临的最大挑战，即环境危机和气候的剧烈变化时。在为解决这些问题而开发的众多创新工具中，可穿戴传感器最近被提议用于以可持续的方式监测植物生长和微气候。这些系统由带有嵌入式传感元件的柔性基质组成，有望在不对植物造成干扰的情况下彻底改变植物监测方式。尽管它们有潜在的好处，但人们对这些设备与植物表面长期共存的影响仍存在担忧。令人惊讶的是，目前缺乏对它们对植物生理学影响的系统分析。本研究旨在探究柔性基质的颜色和几何特征对植物两个关键生理功能——光合作用和蒸腾作用的影响。我们的研究结果表明，正如最近研究所确定的，与有色基质相关的负面影响可以通过在基质表面打孔、使孔隙率达到15.7%来最小化。这种方法减轻了对光吸收的干扰，并将水分流失降低到可忽略不计的程度，使我们的工作成为理解植物可穿戴设备特征与植物健康之间复杂关系的首批开创性努力之一。
