IEM Distinguished Lecturers Seminar: Let the Plants do the Talking: Climate-Smart Agriculture by the messages received from Plants and Soil
***Coffee and cookies at 13:00 before the seminar***
Abstract
As reported in the report recently issued by the United Nations (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC Report 2021), the benefits that technology provides to a green and sustainable economy are highly appreciated and under intense research and development globally. Circuits and Systems (CAS), which are the base for any system, can bring the needed functionalities and performances for reaching eco-friendly, circular and practical solutions.
The IoT active connections in agriculture (as an example in Europe) are exponentially increasing, proving that Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA or Precision/Smart Agriculture) is a very fast-growing research field, where more controlled quality production, water use optimisation, and a lower spreading of pesticides and fertilisers are some key issues, serving the improvement of food quality, but also helping the respect of agriculture for the environment.
To reach these targets, electronics are the perfect tool for interfacing the data sources, extracting and processing the data, and obtaining the needed information along the whole food chain: from the farmer and the professional stakeholders to the consumers.
In the Distinguished Lecture, an overview of electronics for CSA will be presented, analysing the possible solutions that can bring important innovations, advancing the actual strategies based on remote or indirect measurements by instead of in-place measuring the plant and soil parameters (a.k.a. Let the Plants do The Talking), associated with more standard information derived from environmental conditions. This new and disruptive technology, related to Wearable Sensors for Plants, the World Economic Forum has recently identified it as one of the “Top five technologies about to change the world”, indicating it as one of the key solutions to increase food production by 70% by 2050 to be able to feed the world population.
Application scenarios for crop monitoring, water control, information communication and decision support will be presented. In particular, it will be analysed technologies for reaching the needed levels of low power and low cost and the efficient ones to be applied to AgriFood at the global scale, also supporting food security and sustainability.
Short biography
Full Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Department of Electronics and Telecommunications. Micro&Nano Electronics, Smart System Integration and IoTs for the AgriFood Value Chain and for BioMedical Devices.
Visiting Professor at EPFL Lausanne (2019) and at Tel Aviv University (2018-2021).
Visiting Scientist (2018) at MIT and Harvard Medical School for the project SISTER (Smart electronic IoT SysTEms for Rehabilitation sciences).
Leading the eLiONS (electronic Life Oriented iNtelligent Systems - http://elions.polito.it) Laboratory of Politecnico di Torino and coordinating the Italian Institute of Technology Microelectronics group at Politecnico di Torino (IIT@DET).
Founder and Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics - TAFE (https://ieee-cas.org/publication/ieee-transactions-agrifood-electronics). Founder and General-Co-Chair of the IEEE Conference on AgriFood Electronics – CAFE.
Founder and Chair of the IEEE CAS Special Interest Group on AgriFood Electronics. 2023-2024 Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE CAS Society with the Lecture "Let the Plants Do the Talking: Smart Agriculture by the messages received from Plants and Soil".
General Chair of IEEE BioCAS (Biomedical Circuits and Systems) Conference in 2017 in Torino and founder of IEEE FoodCAS Workshop (Circuits and Systems for the FoodChain).
Founder of the Master's Degree in AgriTech Engineering at Politecnico di Torino.
Abstract
As reported in the report recently issued by the United Nations (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC Report 2021), the benefits that technology provides to a green and sustainable economy are highly appreciated and under intense research and development globally. Circuits and Systems (CAS), which are the base for any system, can bring the needed functionalities and performances for reaching eco-friendly, circular and practical solutions.
The IoT active connections in agriculture (as an example in Europe) are exponentially increasing, proving that Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA or Precision/Smart Agriculture) is a very fast-growing research field, where more controlled quality production, water use optimisation, and a lower spreading of pesticides and fertilisers are some key issues, serving the improvement of food quality, but also helping the respect of agriculture for the environment.
To reach these targets, electronics are the perfect tool for interfacing the data sources, extracting and processing the data, and obtaining the needed information along the whole food chain: from the farmer and the professional stakeholders to the consumers.
In the Distinguished Lecture, an overview of electronics for CSA will be presented, analysing the possible solutions that can bring important innovations, advancing the actual strategies based on remote or indirect measurements by instead of in-place measuring the plant and soil parameters (a.k.a. Let the Plants do The Talking), associated with more standard information derived from environmental conditions. This new and disruptive technology, related to Wearable Sensors for Plants, the World Economic Forum has recently identified it as one of the “Top five technologies about to change the world”, indicating it as one of the key solutions to increase food production by 70% by 2050 to be able to feed the world population.
Application scenarios for crop monitoring, water control, information communication and decision support will be presented. In particular, it will be analysed technologies for reaching the needed levels of low power and low cost and the efficient ones to be applied to AgriFood at the global scale, also supporting food security and sustainability.
Short biography
Full Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Department of Electronics and Telecommunications. Micro&Nano Electronics, Smart System Integration and IoTs for the AgriFood Value Chain and for BioMedical Devices.
Visiting Professor at EPFL Lausanne (2019) and at Tel Aviv University (2018-2021).
Visiting Scientist (2018) at MIT and Harvard Medical School for the project SISTER (Smart electronic IoT SysTEms for Rehabilitation sciences).
Leading the eLiONS (electronic Life Oriented iNtelligent Systems - http://elions.polito.it) Laboratory of Politecnico di Torino and coordinating the Italian Institute of Technology Microelectronics group at Politecnico di Torino (IIT@DET).
Founder and Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on AgriFood Electronics - TAFE (https://ieee-cas.org/publication/ieee-transactions-agrifood-electronics). Founder and General-Co-Chair of the IEEE Conference on AgriFood Electronics – CAFE.
Founder and Chair of the IEEE CAS Special Interest Group on AgriFood Electronics. 2023-2024 Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE CAS Society with the Lecture "Let the Plants Do the Talking: Smart Agriculture by the messages received from Plants and Soil".
General Chair of IEEE BioCAS (Biomedical Circuits and Systems) Conference in 2017 in Torino and founder of IEEE FoodCAS Workshop (Circuits and Systems for the FoodChain).
Founder of the Master's Degree in AgriTech Engineering at Politecnico di Torino.
Practical information
- General public
- Free