Corn Communication: New technology lets plant talk when they are facing fungal infections

With crops comes disease and pests, but new technology could allow your corn to communicate when it faces fungal infections.

“From my perspective, I said ‘Hey, we gotta be able to listen from the plant’s perspective. We gotta give them the tools to tell us what they need.’ It fits very well into this concept around precision agriculture, and around trying to use different pieces of tools to detect a crop disease. I mean it’s a really tough problem to solve, and it’s really simple and straightforward to tell, right? It’s not an expensive camera that you’ve gotta buy. It’s not an algorithm that makes predictions. It’s real and true and you can see it with your own eyes because your plants are telling you that they’re turning color to signal that early infection,” said Kyle Mohler with Insignum Ag Tech.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has given this project a green light to run trials on corn plants.

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