Arboricrop: next generation agriculture using real-time information from trees crops

The agricultural industry is undergoing a transformative revolution, leveraging new technologies and knowledge to increase yields while dramatically reducing environmental impacts, lowering production costs, and reducing waste. Plants have evolved many capabilities to detect and respond to stress long before visible symptoms appear, yet current agronomic methods rely predominantly on skilled humans detecting these issues once they become visible. A tool that can tap into early plant stress response mechanisms will provide an invaluable source of agronomic knowledge informing growers, agronomists, or automated systems to apply interventions earlier, thereby minimising yield losses and maximising efficiency.

Plant electrophysiology is a unique approach to capturing plant-scale stress-related information. It has demonstrated promise in controlled environment agriculture, but its applicability to outdoor farming requires investigation. To make this technology widely adoptable, current electrophysiology sensors need adaptation to field conditions, including: miniaturisation to increase spatial finesse and crop attachment, ergonomic design to aid farmer acceptance, radio-frequency data communication and solar charging capacities for independence, and integration into digital agronomy systems to deliver precision control and value for the growers.

To develop the next generation of plant electrophysiological sensors (NGES), we have assembled a multidisciplinary and collaborative team in the UK. The project will be led by Benchmark Control, an electrical engineering and product development firm that has expertise in sensor fabrication; Adrian Scripps is a premier grower and distributor of UK fruit with a forward-thinking approach to sustainability that will provide orchard infrastructure for NGES testing; Hutchinsons is a leading agronomic consulting firm at the forefront of developing digital farming platforms that will integrate NGES outputs into a user-friendly strategic plan; and NIAB, the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture will conduct the NGES orchard experiments and provide project management support.

Our research and development approach enables multiple rounds of NGES design and refinement, performance comparison to currently existing sensors, controlled trials of stress detection in orchard trees, and integration into existing digital farming platforms. After successful completion of these tasks, our NGES will be directly marketable to growers of high-value perennial crops, such as apples, grapes, nuts, and citrus. In the UK, adoption of NGES will reduce costs by avoiding the application of unnecessary crop protection agents or nutritional supplements and increase profits by maximising yield potentials. Ultimately, our radical approach to capturing plant-based information will help transform the agricultural sector into the sustainable version our society and environment needs.