Early in-situ detection of tobacco root diseases using a wearable plant sensor

作者：Qiang Xu, Junying Li, Yanling Zhang, Jianwei Wang, Taibo Liang, Aiguo Wang, Zijie Liaoyang, Weimin Guo, Xianglin Cheng · 发表于：Industrial Crops and Products · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.indcrop.2025.122090 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Plant Pathogens and Resistance、Plant Disease Management Techniques、Smart Agriculture and AI

Black shank disease and root rot disease represent the most destructive diseases of tobacco. Once it occurs, it will spread rapidly, endangering the health of tobacco plants, and even killing them. The stem near the root of tobacco plant is the first part that can exhibit observable signs of root disease. Monitoring the dynamic variations of in-situ stem water content (S t WC) near the root is beneficial for the early detection of tobacco root diseases. Therefore, we developed a wearable plant sensor with a flexible interdigitated-electrodes (IE) probe design for in-situ monitoring of StWC and early identification and warning of tobacco root diseases. The IE probe of wearable sensor was securely affixed to the stem, and the soil moisture (SM) sensors were buried in the corresponding root area. The results demonstrated a clear inconsistency in the observed trend between the S t WC near roots of diseased and healthy tobacco plants. About 60 h before the blackening of the stems near roots, the SM of diseased tobacco plants (0.007 cm 3 /cm 3 ) indicated a slower decrease compared to healthy tobacco plants (0.021 cm 3 /cm 3 ). In accordance with this phenomenon, the daily variation of S t WC near roots of diseased tobacco plants (0.023 cm 3 /cm 3 ) was significantly less than that of healthy tobacco plants (0.048 cm 3 /cm 3 ). Moreover, the abnormal changes of S t WC near roots of diseased tobacco plants after blackening further validated the availability of the wearable sensor in...