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Despite the expected high demands in the agricultural industry, the application of health monitoring systems for plants is still at the research level. While imaging methods are often used for monitoring the health status of the shoot part of a plant, there are limited parameters that can be measured for assessing the health status of a plant root. Studies show that roots need oxygen for aerobic respiration. Higher dissolved oxygen near the root zone may result in a more massive root and a healthier plant. Conventional oxygen sensors are designed to measure the oxygen level in a gaseous environment. Due to their bulky structure, their application for monitoring oxygen in the soil is challenging. In this study, we have used A10 zinc-air batteries as oxygen sensors to monitor the oxygen level at the root zone of four garden plants: sweet pepper, basil, tomato, and cherry tomato. Using a microcontroller system, the electric current from the batteries was recorded as a signal related to the oxygen level. The measurements indicate a variation of ~1% in the oxygen level every 24 hours when the plants were exposed to a controlled light for 12 hours and kept in dark for 12 hours. The simplicity of the application of Zn-air batteries allows us to monitor the oxygen level at several locations around the root of a plant to study their breathing through their roots.
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