Sensors International (Jan 2020)
Electrical response of plants to environmental stimuli: A short review and perspectives for meteorological applications
Abstract
Meteorological knowledge of a given locality is one of the necessary conditions to understand the climate evolution of a zone. It results in a better understanding and prediction of the environmental impact due to current climate change in the world. The sensors used to take these physical measurements are, for the most part, categorized as electronic or mechanical devices. Paradoxically, the new generations of sensors result in increased pollution because of the synthetic material used in their manufacturing process. In addition, the design of these measuring devices is complex and results in high costs. One of the solutions to the problem would be to replace these measurement sensors with biosensors that are more environmentally friendly, cheap and very simple to develop. Plants could play a role in these biosensors. Indeed, studies carried out on plants show that they have a great capacity to interact with their environment. They are living beings, capable of reacting to the meteorological conditions to which they are exposed. This reaction to the variation in the weather conditions of the surrounding environment is automatically translated into the appearance of a variable electrical signal created by the plant. The electrical phenomena produced by biological plants could be easily measured, and signals could be exploited as a characteristic of the meteorological state of the surrounding environment. Biological plants are therefore potential replacements for existing conventional sensors. The study presented in this work summarizes, in a single table, the research conducted to date into the various electrical and analytical models of the activity of a biological plant. All existing experiments in the laboratory and in situ are also reviewed. A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of these experiments has been carried out to better perceive any future opportunities to use the electrophysiological phenomena of the biological plant in metrology (i.e., how to transform biological plants into biosensors).
