Development of a New Handheld Device for Measuring Photosynthetic Carbon Dioxide Assimilation in Plant Leaves

Abstract

With increasing constraints on extensive farming—including soil degradation, salinisation and more frequent climatic anomalies—the development of ‘smart’ agriculture requires the integration of affordable, non-invasive methods for monitoring the physiological state of plants. A key indicator for assessing productivity and the early detection of stress is the rate of photosynthetic CO2 assimilation (A); however, widely available commercial gas analysers are characterised by high cost, technical complexity and considerable weight, which limits their use in large-scale field studies. Here, a new handheld system for measuring assimilation was developed and tested, based on the accumulative principle of recording changes in CO2 concentration using simple infrared sensors and without maintaining a constant air flow around the leaf. A comparison was carried out between a prototype of the developed system and a commercial gas analyser when measuring leaf assimilation under irrigation and simulated drought conditions. The results demonstrated the consistency of the readings from the two systems. The developed system is characterised by its compact size, low cost, and the absence of moving parts and consumables. The proposed system has the potential to be effective for large-scale screening tasks and rapid diagnosis of stress-induced changes; it represents a promising, affordable tool for addressing applied tasks in precision agriculture, environmental monitoring and physiological research.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物葉の光合成CO2同化速度を測定する携帯型センサーを開発し、市販ガス分析計との比較検証まで行っており、植物表現型取得法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

植物フェノタイピング解析を再現する公開資産であることを、入力本文と直接リンクから確認できなかったため保留しました。

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.