Real-Time Glimpse Into Water Stress in Plants
|
 Custom Search
|
Alan N. Lakso, a fruit crop organism physiologist with the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Cornell University, first sought to enlist the university nanofabrication laboratory to develop a tiny sensor to measure water stress in grapevines 15 years ago, but ended up back at the drawing board.
From left: Vinay Pagay, Abraham Stroock and Alan Lakso examine a silicon wafer
that will be used to build micro sensors to monitor water stress in grapevines.
Photograph by Ted Boscia/College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Lakso's vision began to take shape when associate professor of chemical engineering, Abraham Stroock, recently developed a synthetic tree that mimics the flow of water inside plants using a slab of hydrogel with nanometer-scale pores. The device is an embedded micro sensor capable of measuring real-time water stress in living plants. In theory, the sensor will help vintners strike the precise balance between drought and over watering -- both of which diminish the quality of wine grapes.
"To manage ... optimum stress," said Lakso, "we need to monitor ... exactly what's going on in the vine."
With Vinay Pagay, a graduate student with degrees in computer engineering and viticulture, the team is working at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility in Ithaca, N. Y., to develop 4-inch diameter silicon wafer prototypes, each containing approximately 100 micro sensors. They have also begun collaborating with Infotonics, a firm in Canandaigua, N. Y., that specializes in micro electromechanical systems (MEMS), to plan commercialization of the sensors. The partnership applies cutting-edge engineering to practical agricultural concerns.
The team hopes to design a sensor that will transmit field readings wirelessly to a central server. The data will then be summarized online for the grower. The concept has already received attention from E. & J. Gallo Winery in California as well as researchers and industry leaders from Australia, Spain and Italy. "It's not just for the big growers," Lakso said. "We hope the micro-manufacturing will provide low-cost sensors for small growers as well."
Beyond winemaking, the technology has implications for manufacturing, food processing and electronics. Team member Taryn Bauerle, assistant professor of horticulture, described how such sensors could be implanted throughout trees in a forest ecosystem to measure water use and nutrient flow on a large scale with unprecedented accuracy. "All of these [researchers'] brains are coming together," she said. "There's no limit to where we can take this type of technology."
|
Home • General Index • Contact Us • Search • News • About Us • Site Map |
