Advances in flexible wearable sensors for real-time plant health monitoring: Emerging technologies and prospects

Abstract

Plants are essential for global food security and ecosystem stability, exhibiting high sensitivity to environmental fluctuations and both biotic and abiotic stressors. Consequently, monitoring plant health is critical for advancing sustainable agriculture and optimizing resource management. However, traditional methods often rely on destructive sampling or intermittent measurements, failing to capture dynamic physiological processes. Recent developments in flexible wearable sensors enable real-time, in-situ, and non-invasive monitoring of key plant physiological parameters, offering new opportunities for plant phenotyping and precision agriculture. This review summarizes recent advances in material design and interface engineering of plant wearable sensors, focusing on their role in establishing biotic-abiotic interfaces for reliable signal acquisition and their applications in monitoring plant physiological signals and stress responses. Finally, we outline key challenges related to field stability and data integration, envisioning these sensors as pivotal components of intelligent environmental monitoring networks that promote sustainable agriculture and safeguard ecosystem health.

Keywords: Environmental stressors; Flexible wearable sensors; Plant health monitoring; Real-time monitoring; Sustainable agriculture.