New focus on plant water woes

UTAS Scientist Dr Christopher Lucani is focused on optimising a groundbreaking tool that helps irrigators measure moisture levels in crops. 

Dr Lucani developed the Cavicam during his PhD at the University of Tasmania which was designed to track plant water stress in real time. 

The Cavicam measures drought-related damage in plants and monitors plant water usage. 

The Cavicam is expected to play an important role in irrigation decisions for growers, leading to a range of potential benefits including improved crops and fruit taste. 

Dr Lucani’s supervisor during his PhD was Professor Tim Brodribb, a world-renowned expert in plant water relations who developed a groundbreaking technique for imaging drought stress in plants. 

Dr Lucani said that Prof Brodribb developed an optical-based approach, which essentially meant taking pictures of a plant over time and looking for subtle differences in those pictures. 

“In a leaf that would be changes in the light intensity in the veins,” Dr Lucani said. 

“This technique relies on really consistent lighting, keeping the sample very, very well secured and orchestrating this time lapse image capture.” 

Given his technology back ground, Dr Lucani set out to develop a small, portable clamp to help researchers and growers capture that information more easily. 

Before this, Dr Lucani said it was common practice to use microscopes, SLR cam eras, and lights in a “make shift” way. 

Developing the Cavicam soon became the focus of Dr Lucani’s PhD and a few years later, he said they were able to see the plant shrink and expand as it took up or lost water thanks to the tool. 

For several years now the Cavicam has been used by researchers to monitor plant water potential at high resolution, a task difficult to achieve by other means.

Dr Lucani recognises the technology’s potential for agri culture and said the tool has opened new opportunities to study plant physiology. 

“We realised that there was going to be huge potential there in agriculture,” he said. 

The current sensors are divided into two categories, direct measurement, as in measuring water potential, or indirect measurements such as soil and moisture sensors, which measure the water in the soil to infer the water that’s in the plant. 

“Including us, there are only four sensors that can measure plant water potential and there are a range of limitations that come along with that,” he said. 

Some of those sensors can either only be used on woody species, which excludes plants responsible for most of agricultural production, or aren’t a real-time signal of plant water status.

Dr. Lucani is now focused on optimising Cavicam for agricultural use. 

“We are taking this out of research and into the commercial world,” he said. 

“The system needs to be robust, waterproof and pro vide online data access. 

“But more importantly, it needs to offer actionable insights that farmers can use on a daily basis. It has to be simple.” 

Dr. Lucani says the aim is to make the technology available to farmers within 18 months. Trials have already been conducted with local crops such as potatoes, cherries, and wine grapes. 

“It’s especially valuable for certain fruit crops, where you don’t want to overwater and dilute the sugars in the fruit,” he said. “When you see the high-resolution signal, it’s jaw-drop ping,” he said. 

Dr Lucani said the trials have shown significant bene f its, including 40-60 per cent savings in irrigation, a 50 per cent increase in yields, and a 30 per cent decrease in fruit drop. 

“These results show how much growers might be over-irrigating because they don’t fully understand the plant’s needs,” he said. 

Cavicam recently won national recognition as one of the winners of the Beanstalk Drought Venture Studios pro gram, receiving a grant from the government’s drought fund.