Research Projects

The project aims at developing a low-cost device which would eventually estimate the level of water stress in a leaf/plant/canopy and communicate the same to the user (in this case, a farmer). SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES: To predict the health of a leaf/plant/canopy based on a set of wet and dry reference surfaces. Also, the effect of leaf's inclination would be tested using three dry surfaces at different inclinations. EXPERIMENTS: A portable system for detecting plant stress (PoSDePS) will be designed and developed based on a previous preliminary successful investigation. Experiments using PoSDePS will be conducted in various conditions viz. (a) in controlled laboratory conditions with and without the Sun, (b) in open fields with and without crops, and (c) in controlled setups like greenhouses and polyhouses. SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed device has the capability to yield (a) the incident heat load on a surface, (b) the maximum possible evaporation rate in a given atmospheric condition, (c) reflectivity of any coloured surface, and (d) crop water stress index (CWSI) based on the leaf temperature when compared against the wet and dry reference temperatures.