Towards a Frugal Photosynthesis Sensing Toolkit for Data-Driven Plant Science Education and Exploration
Qitong Li, Raj Nileshbhai Dave, Rhema Amanda Phiri, Leo Zhang, Xiaoyu Zheng, Ariana Blake, Livia Ford, Sarah Jones, Susan R. Strickler, Nivedita Arora
TL;DR
PhytoBits is a low-cost, portable gas-exchange sensing toolkit designed to help students and researchers study and distinguish different photosynthetic strategies in plants over multiple days.
Contribution
It introduces a frugal, accessible hardware system validated against research-grade tools for monitoring plant photosynthesis dynamics in educational and research settings.
Findings
PhytoBits accurately distinguishes C3 and CAM pathways.
It resolves facultative CAM and developmental CAM dynamics.
Validated against research-grade gas-exchange systems.
Abstract
Rapid environmental change and advances in data-driven analysis highlight the need not only to use computational tools, but also to foster understanding of the natural world and inspire creativity. Photosynthesis, the process that fuels nearly all life on Earth, provides a compelling context for such learning, particularly in understanding how plants alter their photosynthetic strategies in response to environmental changes. However, existing tools for studying photosynthesis are often inaccessible or limited to demonstrating its presence, rather than capturing its temporal dynamics. We present PhytoBits, a frugal in situ gas-exchange sensing toolkit for distinguishing and teaching photosynthetic strategies. PhytoBits combines leaf enclosure with accessible materials, an off-the-shelf CO2 sensor, and a low-cost microcontroller, to support multi-day monitoring of plant gas-exchange in…
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