Nanofabrication could help ID water stress

Fifteen years ago, when Alan Lakso first sought to enlist Cornell'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.
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. This technology could also be used for ornamental growers.
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.