Researchers from the Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, and their local collaborators from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) as well as the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), National University of Singapore (NUS) have published a review that discusses the recent advances in non-destructive plant health monitoring, ranging from electrochemical-based arrays to nanosensors and electronic noses, and why tracking plant health is an attractive and sustainable strategy that can be used to optimize crop growth practices. The review aims to inspire future developments of non-destructive technologies for plant health diagnosis.
(A) Thermogel application to monitor electrical potential signals from plants with hairy stems (Luo et al., 2021). (B) Printed conductive polymers enabled impedance spectroscopy to detect ozone damage (Kim et al., 2020). (C) Detection of plant VOCs using smartphone-integrated chemical sensor arrays (Li et al., 2019). (D) Differential colorimetic response of sensor arrays upon exposure to tomato plants infected with Pseudomonas infestans (Li et al., 2019). (E) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plot to distinguish pathogenic infections on tomato plants based on chemical sensor arrays (Li et al., 2019). Credit: Frontiers in Plant Science (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2022.884454 To meet the pressing need for global food security and pave the way for sustainable agriculture, the advancement and adoption of agricultural technology are critical in alleviating the conditions of 193 million people in the world who are acutely food insecure. However, sustainable practices need to be implemented to minimize environmental destruction when improving crop yields and productivity. Traditionally, farmers will often only be able to notice signs of their crops' health deteriorating at a stage where reparative measures are limited. Additionally, the current testing via chromatography-based analytical techniques is destructive as it requires, punching out leaf samples that would cause wounding and tissue breakdown. These methods are also laborious, including lab-based extraction and processing of multiple plant samples for every data point. Thus, scientists have been advancing the field of precision agriculture, developing novel sensors and analytical tools to help farmers guide farm-management decisions. The use of non-destructive or minimally invasive sensors for plant metabolites has emerged as an essential analytical tool for real-time monitoring…