A Novel Approach to Assessing Crop Health by Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy

Abstract

Plant disease detection plays a crucial role in global agricultural production due to large losses in production caused by diseases. Thus, several approaches have been developed to detect diseases in plants at the initial stage of infection. In particular, a promising technique for the diagnosis of plant diseases at an early stage is Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). However, despite the potential for early disease detection, EIS is sensitive to environmental variables, including temperature, moisture, and solar irradiation. This paper presents a novel approach to EIS measurements aiming to circumvent its sensitivity to environmental variables. The proposed approach consists of distributing an EIS sensors network throughout the crop including the spatial dimension in the measurement system. The results show the proposed approach has the potential to circumvent the EIS measurement sensitivity to environmental variables.