Hal Crain, owner of Crain Ranch nut farm and FloraPulse customer says:
We’re in the far north end of California and it’s going to reach 97 degrees today. It’s low humidity. It’s not desert by any stretch; we have significant rainfall. But we get really hot during the summer. We’re just starting to use something called the FloraPulse, a plant water stress sensor, on our almond trees, which are about 10% of what we grow, and hopefully soon the walnut trees too. If I plug this device into a given tree and get a measure on that, I can adjust my frequency of irrigation to maximize tree health and crop longevity. Basically, the tree can tell me how thirsty it is. This is a big step in trying to actually get a direct measurement of plant stress and then identifying the parameters of what’s ideal at certain times of the year.
Read the rest at MIT Technology Review's website.
