PLANtAR developed cost-efficient, miniaturized, networked, biodegradable monitoring electronics to help tackle one of the world’s biggest challenges: producing enough food over 9 billion people while also protecting the environment.
PLANtAR partners acknowledged that plant and environmental sensors or complete monitoring systems in the agriculture application field are in the range of 300 € up to thousands of euros, focused on professional users and complicated to use and therefore not suitable for a mass market or for a simple private usage. In addition, all the systems must be manually recovered at the end of the growing season which is time consuming and associated with high costs. Further costs arise due to expensive battery changes. Then, nanotechnology sensors are still limited by complexity, limited sampling frequency (single use tests) and/or the low sensitivity and selectivity. Finally, fully biodegradable and lowcost sensors which include all the necessary wireless sensor components (substrate, microcontroller, sensors, antenna, power supply and housing) are up to now not available in the market. To address these issues, the PLANtAR project focused on development of affordable, highly integrated, miniaturized sensors and close-mesh sensor networks (including nano-sensors and paper-based microfluidic devices) and application intelligence in three areas: precision farming (field / urban), greenhouse / indoor farming and farm monitoring. In addition, it aimed to reduce the environmental impact and ‘de-installation’ costs of these technologies by ensuring that the sensors are biodegradable, so they can be left in place after their use and simply ploughed back into the soil.
With its ambition to provide for high-volume markets, PLANtAR aimed specifically to create low-cost sensors for the detection of pests and plant pathogens (putrefaction), soil moisture, leaf wetness, ammonia, CO2, electrical conductivity (EC) and nitrate content (NO3). It also wanted to work on creating highly integrated circuits and interfaces including signal preprocessing and battery management for connected sensor systems. By creating an ultra-low power microcontroller with an integrated transceiver and suitable interfaces that connect to different sensors, the PLANtAR consortium achieved the highest levels of integration and signal analysis at low power operation. This work also covered new combinations of interface materials and production technologies to meet the requirement for biodegradability. As mentioned, biodegradability was a key challenge within the project and PLANtAR explored how printed electronics could be used to solve this challenge, creating devices that are almost fully biodegradable and have an adequate energy supply and data transmission capability.
Achievements and results of the project
As main achievements in the project PLANtAR we can emphasize the following:
- New and improved sensors and systems for use in the agricultural sector as well as in greenhouses or for ornamental trees – soil moisture sensor, EC sensor, nitrate sensor, CO2 sensor, e-nose, camera surveillance system, putrefaction sensor and leaf wetness sensor – mostly low-cost.
- Biodegradable smart systems that are consisting of sensors, a power source, a communication unit and other electronic components all integrated in a proper housing, low-cost, biodegradable and harmless to the environment – printed batteries, biodegradable housing materials, integration technology for biodegradable sensors and ICs as well as low-cost manufacturing processes based on printed electronics, antennas on biodegradable substrates and new ASIC technology.
- Integration of different PLANtAR Sensors in Cloud & IoT Gateways.
- 12 Different demonstrator set-ups for testing the biodegradable technologies as well es the developed sensors in the area of non-arable farming, indoor farming as well es arable farming.
Background, objectives of the project and challenges
The technological challenges addressed in the project were in the realization of affordable combination of close meshed sensor networks and application intelligence in order to allow for Precision Farming, Indoor Plant Monitoring and Farm Monitoring as well as limiting environmental impact at the end of use:
- Low-cost, highly integrated & miniaturized sensors: The availability of low-cost and miniaturized sensors is essential for a high market penetration. Research efforts were spent on sensors for detection of plant pathogens (putrefaction), temperature, soil moisture, leaf wetness, CO2, EC and NO3.
- Highly integrated circuits, interfaces, signal pre-processing and battery management: An ultralow power micro controller with an integrated transceiver and suitable sensor interfaces to connect different sensors wanted to be adopted for highest integration level and signal analysis at low power operation. Furthermore, the design of the μC should
allow for a minimum of peripheral components. Specialized firmware have been developed to manage the μC deep sleep mode. - System Integration: Based on the requirement of biodegradable, low-cost electronics suitable interconnection and system integration technologies have been delivered. New combinations of interface materials and production technologies have been evaluated.
- Printed electronics based on biodegradable materials: The printed circuit board, the antenna, the battery, some sensors and the housing of the sensors should be made of biodegradable materials. It allows for leaving the sensors at the field after harvesting. The sensors need to be biodegradable and decompose after plowing and harrowing when
they are mechanically destroyed and mixed with the ground. The development of the printing technology that is suitable for biodegradable substrate materials will be a challenge.
As main challenges in the sector of arable farming but as well for greenhouses, drought and costs of irrigation, the EU nitrate directives (limited nitrate use to 80% of crop potential and high fertilizer costs), chemical costs for pests and diseases as well es the salinity of the soil can be stated. There are several causes for crop stress in the environment like nutrients, the climate as well as the availability of water.
Societal & Economic Impact
Developed in PLANtAR technologies have the possibility to help to reduce the cost and ecological footprint of food production and improve the economical position of countries like The Netherlands, Spain and Germany as an exporter of food and greenhouse technology. The developed sensors for agriculture can support farmers in their decisions and enables nitrate fertilization and irrigation application in line with requirements and therefore preventing excessive leaching of nutrients to ground and surface waters (environmental impact). It also saves farmers time and
burden during summer time when irrigation demand is highest, while trying to cope with a logistic puzzle of allocating water to multiple plots on their farm (societal impact). Next, they allowed early detection of diseases like fungus and oomycetes in cultivation and reduce the use of pesticides as well as the optimal harvesting time to minimize losses, which all over save costs. Also realtime monitoring of crops allows farmers to save time and work, making them more profitable and productive as well as more attractive to the young population.
All over this can increase the food production or reduce the use of resources, which in turn leads to economic benefits. Environmental pollution and the loss of biodiversity can also be reduced. In addition, a major advantage of the developed almost biodegradable sensor is, that damage to the sensor itself does not lead to environmental pollution, which can be seen for conventional sensor systems available on the market. Water scarcity, efficient use of nutrients and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are challenges for agriculture in the coming years. Smart miniaturised sensors at lowcost are key in not just monitoring progress, but also to achieve the sector’s environmental goals through data supported decision making.
IoT is an enabler of applications and solutions that contribute to sustainability, better food at lower costs and improvements in healthcare. IoT Middleware (Platform) Solutions, like this from Evalan, accelerates the speed with which solutions that deliver real Societal and Environmental Impact can be applied, and it removes much of the development by delivering a outof- the box building block for the solution. The biological processes are complex and still a broad field of research. Losses in crop production from mildew are among the largest sources of yield reduction in susceptible crops. When the infection has begun, prolonged periods of high temperature and humidity cause increased rates of mildew production and spread. Especially the podosphaera xanthii grows in warmer temperatures around 22° C and saturated atmosphere. Also for cases like that, the developed sensors out of the project PLANtAR can help to unlock new opportunities for prevention.
Discover more in the PLANtAR Project Impact Summary here.
PENTA is an Eureka Network Cluster operated by AENEAS.