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Sensors in agriculture: towards an Internet of Plants

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To ensure a sustainable future and combat food scarcity, we must boost agricultural productivity, improve climate resilience and optimize resource usage. There is untapped potential for dense wireless sensor networks in agriculture that can increase yields and support resilient production when linked to smart decision and control systems.

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Fig. 1: Envisioned architecture for the Internet of Plants.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been carried out under the “Plantenna” research programme, a collaboration among the members (technical universities) of the 4TU Federation in the Netherlands. The authors thank all participants in this programme for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Precision and Microsystems Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Peter G. Steeneken & Gerard J. Verbiest

  2. Horticulture and Product Physiology, Plant Sciences, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Elias Kaiser

  3. Department of Water Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis

Authors
  1. Peter G. Steeneken
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  2. Elias Kaiser
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  3. Gerard J. Verbiest
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  4. Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis
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Contributions

P.G.S. wrote the article. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Peter G. Steeneken.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Steeneken, P.G., Kaiser, E., Verbiest, G.J. et al. Sensors in agriculture: towards an Internet of Plants. Nat Rev Methods Primers 3, 60 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-023-00250-x

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