RAZOR: Can a high-tech 'toothpick' make farming more sustainable?

We live in a world where farming faces the triple threat of climate change, soil degradation, and resource scarcity. And even after thousands of years of growing crops for food, there is still a lot we don't know about plants, including how they respond to certain kinds of stress and how some nutrients are distributed through their various parts. 

But scientists have developed a tool that can analyse crop health in real time and feed the data directly to farmers' phones – helping them reduce the use of vital resources.

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RAZOR's Reya El-Salahi travelled to Italy to speak to the people behind PlantVoice - a bio-sensor that resembles a 'toothpick' and which is inserted directly into a plant to monitor its vital signals.

The device detects chemical and physiological changes, and artificial intelligence is then harnessed to process this data, associating each signal with a specific cause.

PlantVoice's co-founder Matteo Beccatelli says it's like conducting an electrocardiogram on a plant. 

The sensor detects changes in the plant's health through the sap, and AI acts like a 'cardiologist', translating the data into actionable responses. The data and suggestions are fed directly to apps on farmers' phones, helping them understand changes days before the problems present externally.

PlantVoice says its real-time updates can help farmers reduce the use of water, fertilizers and pesticides by up to two-fifths.

"Imagine you have 200 acres and per acre, you have thousands of plants," Beccatelli says. "If you have technology that can save up to 40 percent of the water – imagine the impact..."