Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The aim of this program is to develop tools based on light and optics to monitor the biochemical composition and health of crop in a continuous manner. Most of the primary production on our planet is done by plants and our food security depends on it. Due to the unpredictability of climate, loss of soil and water and increased frequency of phytopathogen epidemics, we must incorporate technologies to improve primary production. One possible way to improve farming is by monitoring and controlling in real time the health, nutritional and metabolic content of crops. Although, there are tools used in scientific research to crop monitor the fitness in real time, we must translate those tools into the real world. The interaction between light and biomass provides an excellent source of tools to study health and chemical composition of plants. Although, several advances have been made in the development of photonic tools, every plant species and biological tissue present challenges that must be addressed. This, the main aim of this project is to characterize, develop and optimize photonic tools to monitor plant performance and help agriculture, horticulture and forestry. In this research program, we have two long-term objectives: (1) Design and development of Raman-based sensors for precision agriculture. Our goal is to use of the Raman effect, which is a physical phenomenon that consists in the change of colour of light scattered by an object. The change in colour provides information of the chemical composition of the sample, and the intensity of the colour indicates concentrations of chemicals. Raman tools are noninvasive and can be acquired in real-time. We aim to design sensors for targeted chemicals to determine nutritional value and health of crops. As well, we will focus on the detection of plant pathogens by probing the presence of toxins they produce using their Raman signals. (2) Optimize photonic sensor networks for the continuous control of plant growth. The current trends in precision agriculture are to perform fertilization and irrigation based on environmental sensing, i.e., by measuring the physical variables of the environments such as soil moisture, temperature, etc. This approach consider that plant physiology will perform in a specific manner under certain environment, however, a more precise approach would be to include physiological information. Despite most methods used in plant physiology are invasive, the exception those based on photonics. Our objective is to simplify photonic tools to be used in an industrial setting and combine them with environmental sensors. This project is particularly importance to agribusinesses in the Niagara region. My laboratory is in the Niagara region, which is a prime agricultural land of Ontario, with important production of grapes, tender fruits and green house horticulture.