These solar-powered sensors can give coffee plants a voice

These coffee plants are no longer silent partners in their own cultivation. Fitted with solar-powered sensors, they can now provide continuous updates on their health and hydration, acting as a 'voice of the plantation' for farmers.

Coffee is one of the crops most vulnerable to climate change. By 2050, half of the global land needed for growing coffee could be unproductive. Places like Tanzania, a major producer, are already experiencing erratic rainfall and long droughts.

Tanzania's Utengule Coffee Farm is trialling these devices on 20 plants. Other probes monitor conditions across the farm, all with the aim of boosting coffee yields, optimizing water use, and making the farm more sustainable.

Wearable plant sensors were one of the World Economic Forum's Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023. Agricultural technology, or agritech, has the potential to play a transformative role across farming, from soil testing to gene-editing and hyperlocal weather predictions.