Rapid Drought Stress Detection in Plants Using Bioimpedance Measurements and Analysis

Smart farming is the targeted use of phenotyping for the rapid, continuous, and accurate assessment of plant health in the field. Bioimpedance monitoring can play a role in smart farming as a phenotyping method, which is now accessible thanks to recent efforts to commoditize and miniaturize electronics. Here, we demonstrate that bioimpedance measurements reflect the physiological changes in live plant tissue with induced alterations in their environmental conditions. When plants were exposed to -1.0 MPa polyethylene glycol, to simulate drought conditions, the extracellular resistance was observed to increase prior to the intercellular resistance, where the low frequency bioimpedance measurements increased by 25% within one hour. Similar patterns were observed when drought stress was applied to the plants by water withholding, with a bioimpedance increase within a matter of a few hours. The bioimpedance measurements were also compared with leaf relative water content, imaging, and field transpirable soil water, which reinforced these findings. These preliminary results suggest that bioimpedance can function as a phenotyping tool for continuous and real time monitoring of plant stress to allow the development of strategies to prevent damage from environmental stresses such as drought.