Exploration of the Plant World: Application and Innovation of Plant-Wearable Sensors for Real-Time Detection

Plants play a crucial role in improving the environment by regulating the temperature, preventing soil erosion, and reducing wind speed. By yielding edible resources such as food crops, vegetables, and fruits, plants also provide essential nutrients for human beings. Consequently, the real-time monitoring of plant growth and surrounding environment has been the primary focus of researchers. Traditional plant monitoring relies on manual inspection, which is both subjective and discontinuous. In recent years, ongoing advancements in wearable sensors have enabled their application in various areas of plant monitoring such as plant growth assessment, environmental monitoring, nutritional detection, water management, and pest warning. These wearable sensors can be directly fixed to plant organs to deliver real-time data on plant growth and environmental conditions via wireless connections with smart devices. This facilitates user management and monitoring, which can contribute to the development of intelligent agriculture with high planting efficiency and sustainability. This review summarizes the design principles, manufacturing methods, characteristics, and feasibility of plant-wearable sensors based on their functions, including plant-phenotype sensors (e.g., hormones and nutrients), plant-growth-environment sensors (e.g., surrounding humidity), and plant stress sensors (e.g., pesticides, volatile organic compounds, and environmental stress). It also explores the challenges and development prospects in this field, providing valuable insights into the future application of wearable sensors to effectively optimize the plant growth status for crop yield and quality.