Ithaca, New York
July 6, 2009
Source:
Cornell Chronicle
|
Ted
Boscia/College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
From left, Vinay Pagay, Abraham Stroock and Alan Lakso
examine a silicon wafer that will be used to build
microsensors to monitor water stress in grapevines. |
Fifteen years ago, when Alan Lakso
first sought to enlist Cornell
University's nanofabrication laboratory to develop a tiny
sensor that would measure water stress in grapevines, the
horticultural sciences professor ended up back at the drawing
board.
It wasn't until Abraham Stroock, associate professor of chemical
engineering, had a breakthrough of his own that Lakso's vision
began to take shape. Stroock's lab recently developed a
synthetic tree that mimics the flow of water inside plants using
a slab of hydrogel with nanometer-scale pores. At last Lakso had
access to the technology to move forward.
The device is an embedded microsensor capable of measuring
real-time water stress in living plants. In theory, the sensor
will help vintners strike the precise balance between drought
and overwatering -- both of which diminish the quality of wine
grapes.
"To manage for optimum stress," said Lakso, a researcher at the
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, "we
need to monitor ... exactly what's going on in the vine."
With Vinay Pagay, a graduate student with degrees in computer
engineering and viticulture, the team is working at the Cornell
Nanofabrication Facility in Ithaca to develop 4-inch diameter
silicon wafer protoypes, each containing approximately 100
microsensors. They have also begun collaborating with
Infotonics, a firm in Canandaigua, N.Y., that specializes in
microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), to plan commercialization
of the sensors. The partnership applies cutting-edge engineering
to practical agricultural concerns.
The team hopes to design a sensor that will transmit field
readings wirelessly to a central server; the data will then be
summarized online for the grower. The concept has already
received attention from E. & J. Gallo Winery in California as
well as researchers and industry leaders from Australia, Spain
and Italy. "It's not just for the big growers," Lakso said. "We
hope the micro-manufacturing will provide low-cost sensors for
small growers as well."
Looking ahead, the team is pursuing alternative sensors that
could enhance research in fields from food science to forestry.
They have begun development of a "multi-use sensor" that
redirects water flow inside the plant through a shunt. In this
case, the sensor could measure the flow of water and mineral
nutrients through the plant, in addition to water stress. Pagay
described it as "a lab on a chip."
Beyond winemaking, the technology has implications for
manufacturing, food processing and electronics. Team member
Taryn Bauerle, assistant professor of horticulture, described
how such sensors could be implanted throughout trees in a forest
ecosystem to measure water use and nutrient flow on a large
scale with unprecedented accuracy. "All of these [researchers']
brains are coming together," she said. "There's no limit to
where we can take this type of technology." |
|