Plantenna: Creating an Internet of plants for a sustainable future

Description

Food security is set to be one of the main societal challenges, with a rapidly growing population combining with urbanization and industrialization. In addition to this, sudden or erratic climate changes like floods and droughts endanger the crop yield. These factors add to the shortage of land and water resources for agriculture and human use, making it extremely challenging to provide sufficient food and nutrition to all. Thankfully, with more accurate information about localized plant health, the efficiency of resource usage can be increased dramatically by the ability to make better informed decisions. This can be addressed by using electronic systems for monitoring health status of plants which, together with wireless communication features, form an internet of plants – a set of connected ‘plantennas’.

This presentation takes a look at the 4.TU Plantenna project, which researches innovative sensors for plant stress and environmental strain, in a collaboration between the four Dutch technical universities. In particular, we’ll look at the role that RF technologies can play here after their widespread success in communications.

Period	14 Oct 2020
Event title	2020 CWTe Research Retreat
Event type	Other
Degree of Recognition	National