Wearable Device for Plant Growth Monitoring: a Pilot Study

Wearable devices are widely used for monitoring a plethora of parameters in many scenarios, ranging from healthcare to environmental control. Recently, these devices have found their application in crop fields or gardens to provide quantitative data on plant growth and their microclimate. Indeed, with the 'smart agriculture' and 'precision agriculture' farmers are more inclined to quantitatively monitor their crops avoiding waste and potential plant illness by an early intervention. The aim of this study was to provide a multi-sensor platform consisting of: a wearable device based on conductive fabric to monitor plant growth and a system devoted to localized microclimate evaluation (i.e., temperature and relative humidity). The platform was tested in a real scenario on a tobacco plant. The obtained results were promising in terms of both the potential of the platform in monitoring the plant growth and the possibility of measuring temperature and relative humidity. These results and the potential to tailor the growth sensors on the need of specific plant snecies encourage further investigation.