Fenoristor: an in-vivo biosensor for agricultural phenotyping

The processes related to the phenotyping of plants for agricultural production involve a detailed analysis of the characteristics of the plant and its environment and are time consuming and costly. The limit of current technologies concerns an approach to analyzing the characteristics of the plant which limits itself to evaluating its external and environmental characteristics. The solution sees the use of the Bioristor biocompatible sensor applied to plant characterization processes and inserted into the platforms used today for phenotyping. The device called «Fenoristor» can be placed inside a vase holder present on a phenotyping platform equipped with a conveyor belt. The device is equipped with electronics and a feeding system compatible with the movement of the cans on the conveyor belt. It allows to measure water stress, physiological state, presence of diseases and alteration of the plant. Thanks to its IT platform, the Fenoristor is able to collect data from the various readers and integrate them with the platform’s data storage system. Furthermore, the data analysis algorithms developed in these years of experimentation on the Bioristor are integrated into the system, for the varietal solution.

The device was created in collaboration with the ALSIA platform of Metapontum Agrobios, partner of this project.

Fenoristor (evolution of Bioristor) is an in-vivo biosensor, which can be integrated into the stem of plants, capable of reading the composition of the sap through electrochemical measurements and producing unique data on the state of health of the plant. It is based on biocompatible textile fibers that guarantee a long permanence in the plant for long periods, thus guaranteeing an in vivo measurement of the quantity of sap and the concentration of ions circulating in the sap. The measurements are carried out continuously and in real time, for the entire duration of the plant’s production cycle, with monitoring from the cloud and in VIVO (the sensor allows you to directly measure what is happening inside the plant).

Fenoristor is proposed as an innovative tool in the world of precision agriculture and agritech in the field of phenotyping, thanks to which it is possible to acquire direct and precise information on the real health conditions of the plant and the actual water, nutritional and phytosanitary needs. Through the Bioristor, the plant is constantly interconnected with the agricultural operator, who thanks to this information can operate to optimize agricultural practices, maximizing production and minimizing costs and waste, not least while preserving environmental sustainability. The data collected from the plant is continuously processed and analyzed using analytical mathematical models, artificial intelligence algorithms based, for example, on Random Forest models to identify the effective state of health of the plants, and supporting these with the recurrent neural networks (RNN ) with long short-term memory (LSTM) to be able to make predictions even 24h in advance.

We founded a CNR spin off company named PlantBit to develop the technology patented, we are looking for a first round of investment to start the production. We foresee the development of a randomized product for the phenotyping platforms with which we are in collaboration, in order to then expand the market internationally.