Bioelectronic platform for enhancing plant growth: elucidating the underlying mechanisms

Climate change and population growth demand more sustainable food production with a reduced carbon footprint.

Precision agriculture aims to increase production yield and minimize recourses use via high end technologies for controlling and monitoring plant growth.

The project aims to develop a bioelectronic technology for enhancing plant growth and generate vital new knowledge on the physical and biological mechanisms involved. Plants respond to various environmental stimuli and coordinate their growth and development accordingly.

It has been shown that plants respond to externally applied electric fields with directional root growth, enhanced seed germination and enhanced growth.

However, the underlying biological mechanisms of the plant responses to electric fields are not well understood in part because the physics of the systems used so far were not well described. So far, the electrical stimulation of plants by direct interface with electrodes has not been studied.

Organic mixed ionic electronic conductors (OMIECs) offer several advantages for interfacing with the biological world over inorganic counterparts.

In my group we developed OMIEC based technologies that enable direct interface with plants´ root system and our initial results show enhancement of plant growth upon stimulation.

Based on these breakthroughs we will pursue new approaches for studying plant responses to electrical stimulation and elucidate the underlying processes involved in growth enhancement.