Abaxial leaf surface-mounted multimodal wearable sensor for continuous plant physiology monitoring | Science Advances

Wearable plant sensors hold tremendous potential for smart agriculture. We report a lower leaf surface-attached multimodal wearable sensor for continuous monitoring of plant physiology by tracking both biochemical and biophysical signals of the plant and its microenvironment. Sensors for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs), temperature, and humidity are integrated into a single platform. The abaxial leaf attachment position is selected on the basis of the stomata density to improve the sensor signal strength. This versatile platform enables various stress monitoring applications, ranging from tracking plant water loss to early detection of plant pathogens. A machine learning model was also developed to analyze multichannel sensor data for quantitative detection of tomato spotted wilt virus as early as 4 days after inoculation. The model also evaluates different sensor combinations for early disease detection and predicts that minimally three sensors are required including the VOC sensors.