Spectral Imaging System for Plant Health Monitoring

This proposal represents a joint small business/university development effort to investigate the problem of plant health monitoring and to evolve a preliminary design of a spectral imaging system. Biotronics Technologies, as the small business SBIR proposer, has extensive background in the development of spectral and spatial imaging systems and has proven its capability to convert a set of requirements into a system concept and a system concept into a working electro-optical instrumentation system. The Bioresource Engineering of Rutgers University, the university partner in the proposal, brings a rich storehouse of knowledge and a leading edge research program in horticultural systems in which machine vision systems and spectral analysis have played a major role. This program is guided by an interdisciplinary systems approach to plant production systems that recognizes an interconnected nature of a system such as CELSS. Plant health monitoring development in the proposed program will examine the potential of on-line/real-time measurements from the easily observed and well understood (environment) through the increasingly difficult functions described below: 1. Water uptake and transpiration; 2. Plant nutrients; and 3. Plant disease diagnosis. The end Phase I product will be a preliminary spectral imaging system designed to serve as the springboard for Phase II development.