Green electronics project sets out to create compostable crop sensors

An international research collaboration is setting out to find new ways of monitoring grop growth with biodegradable sensors which can be composted at the end of their lifespan. The £1.8m CHIST-ERA project, called Transient Electronics for Sustainable ICT in Digital Agriculture, is led by researchers from the University of Glasgow and supported by colleagues in Canada, Finland, Poland and Switzerland. Over the next three years, the project partners will work together to develop a new type of environmentally-friendly modular sensor system. They will find ways to create devices built from sustainable and degradable materials with the aim of cutting down on the growing problem of electronic waste. The devices will have two parts: a solar-powered patch which can be applied to the surface of the leaves of crops to measure key indicators of their growth, and an electronic module which can wirelessly transmit the information collected by the patch to a central computer. The team aim to make the patch completely biodegradable, and capable of nourishing the soil once it reaches the end of its period of usefulness. To do so, they will investigate how compostable electronic components might be made from everyday materials like rice husks, fibrous proteins like wool, or biodegradable polymers like starch or cellulose, combined with conductive metal nanoparticles made from materials like copper and zinc.