Harbor porpoises attracted to oil platforms when searching for food

A large gathering of fish tempts harbor porpoises to search for food around oil and gas platforms, even though the noise from these industrial plants normally to scare the whales away; decommissioned platforms may therefore serve as artificial reefs

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

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IMAGE: THE STUDY SITE WITH THE OIL AND GAS PLATFORM DAN-F IN THE DANISH SECTOR OF THE CENTRAL NORTH SEA. TO THE RIGHT A SMALL SERVICE VESSEL AND A YELLOW BUOY... view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: JEPPE BALLE DALGAARD.

A large gathering of fish tempts harbour porpoises to search for food around oil and gas platforms, even though the noise from these industrial plants normally to scare the whales away. Decommissioned platforms may therefore serve as artificial reefs in the North Sea.

Harbour porpoises are one of the smallest of all whales and the only whale that with certainty breeds in Danish waters. The harbour porpoise was protected in 1967 in Danish Waters, and researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, have previously shown that underwater noise from ships, and seismic surveys of the seabed scare the porpoises away.

A brand new study now shows that in some parts of the year there are actually more porpoises searching for food around the largest Danish oil platform, Dan F, in the North Sea than just three to ten kilometres away from the platform.

21 listening stations in the North Sea

A team of researchers deployed 21 listening stations at the bottom of the North Sea. The innermost listening station was deployed immediately under the very large Dan F-oil and gas platform, while the outermost station was located 25.6 km away from the platform. One of the many listening stations was placed halfway between the inner- and outermost stations near the old oil well, Ragnar, which no longer produces oil.

The listening stations were left in the North Sea for two years to record all sounds below the surface of the sea, including the noise from ships and platforms, but also the sounds produced by porpoises for orientation and the so-called "buzz sounds" telling the researchers that the whales are actively hunting for food.

"With this study, we're presenting the first investigation of the presence and feeding activity of porpoises throughout the year around oil platforms, as far as we know," says senior researcher Jonas Teilmann from the Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Denmark, who headed the investigations.

The new discoveries have just been published in the British journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence, and the results from the many data surprised the researchers.

Food attracts more than noise scares

"During the six months from July to January, we heard more porpoises searching for food around the two installations, the Dan-F platform and the Ragnar well, than we did in control areas located 6 and 25 kilometres away from Dan-F. This was even as high as the highest porpoise activity we have seen for Natura 2000 sites in the inner Danish waters," says Jonas Teilmann.

According to the researchers, the installations act as natural reefs where porpoises are provided with favourable living conditions as numerous species of plants and animals settle on the structures and provide hiding places and more food to the fish. Moreover, fishing is prohibited within a radius of 500 metres from the platforms why the seabed is undisturbed from trawling.

At the Dan-F platform, the researchers heard extensive activity by porpoises when searching for food up to 800 metres from the platform. In fact, the researches know that there were up to twice as many porpoises just below the platforms than recorded by the acoustic recorders as the noise from the platform will often drown the sounds made by the porpoises. Not until a distance of 12 kilometres from the platform, the noise disappeared.

The researchers cannot answer the question of whether the porpoises slowly get used to the noise from the drilling platforms, but it is clear that the motivation for finding food is greater than the deterrence effect of the noise.

"Our data show that the porpoises ignored the annoyance of the underwater noise to exploit the greater availability of food around the fixed installations," says Jonas Teilmann.

Should artificial installations be left in place?

Especially during the period from July to January, it is important for the porpoises to consume as much food as possible in order to build up a solid layer of blubber that can bring the animals through the cold winter. It is also during these six months that the mothers need energy so they have sufficient milk for their calves.

In contrast, the researchers found that there are far fewer porpoises searching for food around the artificial installations in the period from February to June.

"The signals from porpoises were far less frequent during this particular period, but the buzz sounds revealed that the porpoises still searched for fish around the Dan-F platform and the Ragnar well from February to June. The noise from the platform is the same all year round, so we interpret the absence of porpoises as a change in the behaviour or the presence of fish," says Jonas Teilmann.

The researchers recorded sounds from porpoises around the clock and could therefore hear that the whales were more actively searching for food at night than during the day, as far as 800 metres from the Dan-F platform.

This came as a surprise to the researchers, but they know that light lures zooplankton, squids and fish up into the upper water column at night. This initiates an efficient food chain that ends with the porpoises. This could explain why the Dan-F platform was especially attractive at night, while the day activity was higher at Regnar, where no light was present.

The OSPAR Convention, which protects the North Sea, requires that all decommissioned oil and gas installations are removed from the North Sea. However, the researchers are now pointing out that the old installations may be left to serve as new artificial reefs in the North Sea, the so-called "Rigs-to Reef" concept. Platforms and other installations can increase the diversity and biodiversity in areas that have been destroyed by trawling or where the original stone reefs have been removed and used for construction projects on land.

The studies were financed by Total E&P Danmark A/S.

Further information: Senior Researcher Jonas Teilmann, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Denmark; mail: jte@bios.au.dk; phone: +45 2142 4291.

By Peter Bondo

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2688-8319.12055

CAPTION

A string with listening buoys is ready to be deployed in the sea. The bag, which is made of biodegradable hessian, is full of pebbles and serves as an anchor. From the surface, the researchers can acoustically release a hook to the anchors, bringing the recorders to the surface while the bags remain on the seabed where they dissolve.

CREDIT

Photo: Karin Clausen.

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Porpoise mother with her calf.

CREDIT

Photo: Jeppe Balle Dalgaard.

Commercial truck electrification is within reach

New cost and performance analysis by Berkeley Lab argues that policies are needed to spur widespread adoption of electric long-haul trucks

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

Research News

When it comes to electric vehicles, particularly for heavy-duty trucks, the limitations of battery technology are often seen as the main barrier to widespread adoption. However, a new analysis concludes that it's the lack of appropriate policies around adoption incentives, charging infrastructure, and electricity pricing that prevents widespread electrification of commercial trucking fleets.

Researchers from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Los Angeles published a new study that makes the case for prioritizing public policy to help move long-haul trucking from diesel to electric. Doing so will mean huge gains in addressing the climate crisis and avoiding premature deaths due to local vehicular pollution, which disproportionately affects communities of color.

The study analyzes the total cost of ownership of an electric long-haul truck compared to a diesel long-haul truck. Using the current price of a battery pack and assuming a 375-mile range, the researchers found that an electric long-haul truck has a 13% per mile lower total cost of ownership, with a net savings of $200,000 over the lifetime of the electric truck. The total cost of ownership analysis takes into account the purchase price and operating costs over the lifetime of the truck.

The researchers also showed that future reductions in battery costs - taken together with a more aerodynamic design and monetized benefits of reduced pollution - would result in a 50% per mile lower total cost of ownership compared to a diesel long-haul truck by 2030. The electrification of long-haul trucks therefore is possible, and figuring out what is required to move the nation's trucking fleet to widely adopt electric trucks is the next step, the authors said.

"Given the massive economic and environmental benefits, the case for long-haul electric trucking is stronger than ever before," said Berkeley Lab Research Scientist Nikit Abhyankar, one of the authors of the study. "Enabling policies such as adoption and charging infrastructure incentives, sales mandates, and cost-reflective electricity pricing are crucial."

Why focus on long-haul trucks?

Electric cars are becoming more prevalent now, with a substantial increase in global sales and commitments from several major auto manufacturers, including General Motors and Volvo, to sell only electric vehicles by 2030-2035. Long-haul trucks have not experienced the same level of growth, yet they are diesel-fuel guzzlers and a major source of air pollution, contributing more than 20% of U.S. transportation-sector greenhouse gas emissions.

Berkeley Lab scientists have done extensive research tracking the impact of diesel trucks on air quality and public health in disadvantaged communities. Even though diesel trucks account for just a small fraction of motor vehicles, they are responsible for almost one-third of motor vehicle CO2 emissions. The transportation sector was the largest contributor of CO2 emissions associated with the US economy.

"If we can move away from diesel-dependent heavy-duty vehicles, we have a chance at significantly reducing greenhouse gas and particulate emissions from the transportation sector," said Berkeley Lab Staff Scientist Amol Phadke, lead author on this study.

There are currently two main pathways to electrify trucks - fuel cells and batteries - and both are actively being pursued by researchers at Berkeley Lab. Long-haul trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells are on the horizon, and Berkeley Lab scientists are playing a leading role in a new DOE consortium called the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck (M2FCT) to advance this technology. Battery-powered electric trucks have seen the most dramatic improvements in technology in recent years, making the battery costs more affordable and competitive.

What's more, electricity from renewable energy sources is becoming more cost-competitive, and Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that decarbonizing the electric grid is feasible in the coming decades, which means electric long-haul trucks would no longer contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is exciting to see recent dramatic improvements in battery technology and costs," said Phadke. "Electric trucks can generate significant financial savings for truck owners and fleet operators, while enabling inflation-proof freight transportation that can have significant macroeconomic benefits."

###

The study was supported in part by the Hewlett Foundation.

-By Kiran Julin

Study shows how varying climate conditions impact vulnerable species

Studying the effect of varying climate conditions in the Yamal region helps scientists understand the impact of climate change on vulnerable animals such as arctic foxes.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

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IMAGE: PETER UNGAR, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

New findings on the diet of Arctic foxes, determined by the condition of their teeth, show how varying climate conditions in the Arctic affect the animals that live there.

In a study published in Polar Biology, Peter Ungar, Distinguished Professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, and several co-authors analyzed tooth breakage and wear - both gross and micro - of Arctic foxes from Russia's Yamal Peninsula.

Studying the effect of varying climate conditions within this region helps scientists understand the impact of climate change on vulnerable animals and could explain future responses and adaptation, given the warming trend and thawing in Arctic areas. The researchers' study is the first to combine dental proxies for short-term, or seasonal, and long-term, or lifetime, diet to better understand how resource depletion affects species differently in different locations within the Arctic.

In this study, the researchers compared the condition of the teeth over space - northern versus southern peninsula - and time and found that foxes from the northern peninsula likely had to periodically rely on larger prey rather than their preferred prey of rodents such as lemmings and voles.

Microwear analysis of teeth indicated the foxes in both locations dined on the preferred smaller prey during rodent "rich" years. However, during rodent "bust" years in the southern peninsula, the foxes had to adapt to conditions and fall back on larger prey, such as ptarmigans and hares. In the north, where these species were less available, foxes evidently scavenged more reindeer carcasses.

Bone consumption by animals causes tooth breakage, heavy wear and microscopic pitting. Breakage and gross wear reflect animal diet over the course of a lifetime, whereas microscopic pitting reflects a pattern of seasonal changes over time. Ungar is a leading expert in dental microwear analysis, including what it says about animals' diet as it relates to evolution.

"These data together suggest that dental evidence can provide important insights into variation in the feeding ecology of Arctic foxes and potentially into the impacts of changes in food abundance across space and time," Ungar said.

The Arctic fox is listed as a climate change flagship species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The researchers, including colleagues from the United States, Russia, Norway and France, examined 78 Arctic fox specimens, all caught by indigenous trappers on Yamal for the purpose of harvesting fur. Preliminary analysis focused on three trapping periods - December 1981 to March 1982, November 1983 to March 1984 and October 2007 to March 2008. The foxes were selected from the northern and southern Yamal regions during the rodent-poor periods of 1981-1982 and 2007-2008 and rodent-rich period of 1983-1984.

"Time or space alone is not enough to get the full story of fox ecological response to environmental variation," Ungar said. "Combining these proxies for understanding life in the past is essential to inform us on the ecology of living animals in a rapidly changing and fragile ecosystem."

The researchers' study is part of a large, multi-year project focused on the Yamal Peninsula, which serves as a small-scale and manageable research model for the Arctic as a whole. Habitats of the Yamal region, roughly 1,400 miles northeast of Moscow, range from forest in the south to tundra in the north. The Yamal has a rich diversity of native and invasive plant and animal species, a large indigenous population with strong traditional culture, and economically critical natural resources. As part of this project, Ungar and his colleagues are studying how climate change - specifically warming and extreme weather - has affected the temperature, precipitation and landforms in the region, and how people, animals and plants have adapted to these changes.

CAPTION

Arctic fox, in winter fur, scavenging on reindeer remains.

CREDIT

Aleksandr Sokolov, Arctic Research Station

Ungar's co-authors are Alexandria Peterson, graduate student in the U of A's Environmental Dynamics program; Blaire Van Valkenburgh at the University of California, Los Angeles; Dorothee Ehrich from the Arctic University of Norway; Olivier Gilg from the Groupe de Recherche en Écologie Arctique in France; and Aleksandr Sokolov, Natalia Sokolova, Ivan Fufachev, Alexandra Terekhina, Alexander Volkovitskiy and Viktor Shtro from the Arctic Research Station, Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This project was made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation's Navigating the New Arctic initiative, one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas.

Ungar is director of the Environmental Dynamics program at the University of Arkansas.

 

State of the climate over the three gorges region of the Yangtze river in 2019

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

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IMAGE: NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL STATION AT YICHANG view more 

CREDIT: XIANYAN CHEN

The Three Gorges project, completed in 2009, is one of the world's largest hydropower projects. It has brought important social and economic benefits in flood control, power generation, shipping and water resources redistribution.

But how does such a large-scale water conservancy project affect the local climate, and is the response to climate change a relatively vulnerable one? The Three Gorges Project has been repeated questioned, especially whenever rainstorms, floods and drought hit the area around the reservoir area or its neighboring areas, since the Three Gorges Reservoir started to raise its water level to the desired target.

"The Three Gorges Region is located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and its annual climate characteristics are obviously affected by the surrounding climate of the Yangtze River, which means that it is greatly affected by the synergistic influence of large-scale atmospheric circulation, oceanic forcing, and water vapor transport. In order to better understand the climate of the Three Gorges Region, the National Climate Center has carried out continuous climate monitoring since 1996 and released its Annual Climate Report each year. Our report is the latest result based on the observation data in 2019, part of a series of annual climate reports for the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River, providing information on climate monitoring, meteorological disasters and climate impacts," says Dr. CHEN Xianyan, a researcher at the National Climate Center and the first author of this paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Although against the background of climate warming, significant changes have been found in temperature, precipitation and other meteorological observations, as well as some extreme climate events, in the Three Gorges Region and its surrounding areas in the past several decades. Many studies have shown, based on numerical simulation experiment results and statistical comparative analyses, that the Three Gorges Region has little influence on local climate changes compared with environmental climate changes.

Characterized by a much warmer spring and autumn, and much drier fall, the climate in the year 2019 in the Three Gorges Region showed an upward trend in temperature.

The major climate events in the Three Gorges Region in 2019, including heat waves, drought, heavy rain and flooding, were not isolated events in region; they were the responses to weather extremes in the Yangtze River Basin as a whole. The information in the annual report was not a diagnosis of extreme climate events. However, detailed climate information is helpful to understand the climate and its changes in the Three Gorges Region, and is also the basis of research on the climatic effects of the Three Gorges Region.

"We intend to carry out continuous monitoring in this area and analyze the causes and mechanisms of climate extremes to assess the impact of reservoir impoundment," concludes CHEN

Not just CO2: Rising temperatures also alter photosynthesis in a changing climate

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

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IMAGE: RISING TEMPERATURES ASSOCIATED WITH CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT PLANTS' ABILITY TO MAINTAIN THEIR STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY, ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE, RETAIN WATER, AND GROW AND REPRODUCE. view more 

CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY JULIE MCMAHON

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Agricultural scientists who study climate change often focus on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will affect crop yields. But rising temperatures are likely to complicate the picture, researchers report in a new review of the topic.

Published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, the review explores how higher temperatures influence plant growth and viability despite the greater availability of atmospheric CO2, a key component of photosynthesis.

Excessive heat can reduce the efficiency of enzymes that drive photosynthesis and can hinder plants' ability to regulate CO2 uptake and water loss, the researchers write. Structural features can make plants more - or less - susceptible to heat stress. Ecosystem attributes - such as the size and density of plants, the arrangement of leaves on plants or local atmospheric conditions - also influence how heat will affect crop yields.

The review describes the latest scientific efforts to address these challenges.

"It's important to have an understanding of these issues across scales - from the biochemistry of individual leaves to ecosystem-level influences - in order to really tackle these problems in an informed way," said lead author Caitlin Moore, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia and an affiliate research fellow at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Moore led the review with Amanda Cavanagh, another U. of I. alumna now at the University of Essex in the U.K.

"Historically, there's been a lot of focus on rising CO2 and the impact that it has on plants," said co-author Carl Bernacchi, a professor of plant biology and of crop sciences and an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I. "And it is an important factor, because we are changing that carbon dioxide concentration enormously. But it's a small part of the bigger story. Once you throw changing temperatures into the mix, it completely messes up our understanding of how plants are going to respond."

"Take Rubisco, the key enzyme that fixes carbon dioxide into sugars, making life on Earth possible," Cavanagh said. "Rubisco speeds up as the temperature increases, but it's also prone to making mistakes."

Instead of fixing carbon dioxide by binding it to sugars, a key step in photosynthesis, Rubisco sometimes fixes oxygen, initiating a different pathway that wastes a plant's resources. Higher temperatures make this more likely, Cavanagh said. At even higher temperatures, the enzyme will begin to lose its structural integrity, making it ineffective.

Excessive heat can also undermine a plant's reproductive output. Other heat-sensitive enzymes are essential to the light-harvesting machinery of plants or play a role in moving sugars to different plant tissues, allowing the plant to grow and produce grains or fruits.

"If these little molecular machines are pushed out of the temperature range that's optimal, then they can't do their job," Cavanagh said.

When temperatures rise too high, plant leaves open the pores on their surfaces, called stomata, to cool themselves. Stomata also allow plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but when they're fully open, the leaf can lose too much moisture.

"Temperature affects the atmosphere above the plant," Moore said. "As the atmosphere heats up, it can hold additional water, so it's pulling more water from the plants."

Scientists at Illinois and elsewhere are looking for ways to enhance crop plants' resilience in the face of these changes. Moore, whose work focuses on ecosystem-scale factors, said new tools that can help screen plants on a large scale are essential to that effort. For example, satellites that can detect changes in chlorophyll fluorescence in plants can indicate whether a crop is under heat stress. These changes in fluorescence are detectable before the plant shows any outward sign of heat stress - such as their leaves turning brown. Developing these tools may enable farmers to respond more quickly to crop stress before too much damage is done.

Cavanagh, who studies the molecular biology and physiology of plants, said some plants are more heat tolerant than others, and scientists are searching their genomes for clues to their success.

"For example, you can look at wild Australian relatives of rice that are growing in much harsher climates than most paddy rices," she said. "And you see that their enzymes are primed to work more efficiently at hotter temperatures."

One goal is to transfer heat-tolerant genes to cultivated rice varieties that are more susceptible to heat stress.

Other strategies include engineering structures that pump more CO2 to the site of carbon fixation to improve Rubisco efficiency; altering the light-gathering properties of leaves at the tops and bottoms of plants to even out distribution of sunlight and maintain moisture levels; and changing the density of stomata to improve their control of CO2 influx and moisture loss.

Collaboration between scientists focused on different scales of ecosystem and plant function - from the atmospheric to the molecular - is essential to the success of efforts to build resilience in crop plants, the researchers said.

"The world is getting hotter at a shocking rate," Cavanagh said. "And we know from global models that each increase in gross temperature degree Celsius can cause 3% to 7% losses in yield of our four main crops. So, it's not something we can ignore.

"What makes me optimistic is the realization that so much work is going into globally solving this problem," she said.

CAPTION

From left, Caitlin Moore, Carl Bernacchi, Katherine Meacham-Hensold and their colleagues review how rising temperatures affect photosynthesis in plants and how scientists are addressing the challenges.

CREDIT

Photo by Claire Benjamin/RIPE project

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Co-author Amanda Cavanagh studies the molecular biology and physiology of plants.

CREDIT

Photo by Claire Benjamin/RIPE project

Cavanagh and Bernacchi are affiliates of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project at the U. of I. Moore also is an affiliate of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation at Illinois. Bernacchi is a research plant physiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service.

The paper "The effect of increasing temperature on crop photosynthesis: From enzymes to ecosystems" is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau.

 

NTU Singapore scientists develop device to 'communicate' with plants using electrical signals

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

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VIDEO: PLANT TALK: A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS LED BY #NTUSG? HAS DEVELOPED A DEVICE THAT CAN 'COMMUNICATE' WITH PLANTS BY DELIVERING ELECTRICAL SIGNALS TO AND FROM PLANTS. POTENTIAL USES OF THE... view more 

CREDIT: NTU SINGAPORE

A team of scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a device that can deliver electrical signals to and from plants, opening the door to new technologies that make use of plants.

The NTU team developed their plant 'communication' device by attaching a conformable electrode (a piece of conductive material) on the surface of a Venus flytrap plant using a soft and sticky adhesive known as hydrogel. With the electrode attached to the surface of the flytrap, researchers can achieve two things: pick up electrical signals to monitor how the plant responds to its environment, and transmit electrical signals to the plant, to cause it to close its leaves.

Scientists have known for decades that plants emit electrical signals to sense and respond to their environment. The NTU research team believe that developing the ability to measure the electrical signals of plants could create opportunities for a range of useful applications, such as plant-based robots that can help to pick up fragile objects, or to help enhance food security by detecting diseases in crops early.

However, plants' electrical signals are very weak, and can only be detected when the electrode makes good contact with plant surfaces. The hairy, waxy, and irregular surfaces of plants make it difficult for any thin-film electronic device to attach and achieve reliable signal transmission.

To overcome this challenge, the NTU team drew inspiration from the electrocardiogram (ECG), which is used to detect heart abnormalities by measuring the electrical activity generated by the organ.

Transmitting electrical signals to create an on demand plant-based robot

As a proof-of concept, the scientists took their plant 'communication' device and attached it to the surface of a Venus flytrap - a carnivorous plant with hairy leaf-lobes that close over insects when triggered.

The device has a diameter of 3 mm and is harmless to the plant. It does not affect the plant's ability to perform photosynthesis while successfully detecting electrical signals from the plant. Using a smartphone to transmit electric pulses to the device at a specific frequency, the team elicited the Venus flytrap to close its leaves on demand, in 1.3 seconds.

The researchers have also attached the Venus flytrap to a robotic arm and, through the smartphone and the 'communication' device, stimulated its leaf to close and pick up a piece of wire half a millimetre in diameter.

Their findings, published in the scientific journal Nature Electronics in January, demonstrate the prospects for the future design of plant-based technological systems, say the research team. Their approach could lead to the creation of more sensitive robot grippers to pick up fragile objects that may be harmed by current rigid ones.

Picking up electrical signals to monitor crop health monitoring

The research team envisions a future where farmers can take preventive steps to protect their crops, using the plant 'communication' device they have developed.

Lead author of the study, Chen Xiaodong, President's Chair Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at NTU Singapore said: "Climate change is threatening food security around the world. By monitoring the plants' electrical signals, we may be able to detect possible distress signals and abnormalities. When used for agriculture purpose, farmers may find out when a disease is in progress, even before full?blown symptoms appear on the crops, such as yellowed leaves. This may provide us the opportunity to act quickly to maximise crop yield for the population."

Prof Chen, who is also Director of the Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices (iFLEX) at NTU, added that the development of the 'communication' device for plants monitoring exemplifies the NTU Smart Campus vision which aims to develop technologically advanced solutions for a sustainable future.

Next generation improvement: Liquid glue with stronger adhesive strength

Seeking to improve the performance of their plant 'communication' device, the NTU scientists also collaborated with researchers at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), a unit of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

Results from this separate study, published in the scientific journal Advanced Materials in March, found that by using a type of hydrogel called thermogel - which gradually transforms from liquid to a stretchable gel at room temperature - it is possible to attach their plant 'communication' device to a greater variety of plants (with various surface textures) and achieve higher quality signal detection, despite plants moving and growing in response to the environment.

Elaborating on this study, co-lead author Professor Chen Xiaodong said, "The thermogel-based material behaves like water in its liquid state, meaning that the adhesive layer can conform to the shape of the plant before it turns into a gel. When tested on hairy stems of the sunflower for example, this improved version of the plant 'communication' device achieved four to five times the adhesive strength of common hydrogel and recorded significantly stronger signals and less background noise."

Co-lead author of the Advanced Materials study and Executive Director of IMRE, Professor Loh Xian Jun, said: "The device can now stick to more types of plant surfaces, and more securely so, marking an important step forward in the field of plant electrophysiology. It opens up new opportunities for plant-based technologies."

Moving forward, the NTU team is looking to devise other applications using the improved version of their plant 'communication' device

CAPTION

Members of the research team include (top L-R) NTU Prof Chen Xiaodong, A*STAR Prof Loh Xian Jun, PhD students from the NTU School of Materials Science and Engineering, (bottom L-R) Li Wenlong and Luo Yifei.

CREDIT

NTU Singapo

CAPTION

The plant 'communication' device is attached on the surface of a Venus flytrap plant.

CREDIT

NTU S