Soil-plant-atmosphere system in tomato and maize crops: correlation of gaseous emissions to water stress

The application of Site Specific Crop Management consists of the knowledge on the soil variability. In particular, for a sustainable water management is fundamental to obtain differentiated response in terms of selective irrigation, analyzing and evaluating the water content of the soil or the water requirement of the plants. The innovative contribution of this research lies in designing, developing and validating a technology platform consisting of a hardware for monitoring of gaseous emissions, such as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from the soil-plant-atmosphere system of intensive crops, i.e., tomato and maize. In order to determine the water content of these systems, we analyzed experimental data acquired in situ by portable sensing units based on Metal-OXide (MOX) gas sensors, thus comparing the results with meteo-sat data and farming operations (e.g. irrigations, rains or pestice-based treatments). A dependence of gaseous emissions on the hydric/metabolic status of the plants together with a correlation between recorded sensor signals and significant events for the crops were proved.