New Paper: Harnessing Solar-Induced Fluorescence for On-Farm Agriculture
A new paper co-authored by Dr. Pierrat — led by Sophie Ruehr, along with Nick Parazoo and Trevor Keenan — is out now in Environmental Research Letters. “Harnessing solar-induced fluorescence for on-farm agricultural research and management: recent advances and outstanding needs” reviews how solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) can be used to monitor crop function at the farm scale, synthesizing recent advances in the field and highlighting the outstanding needs for turning SIF into a practical tool for agricultural research and management.
Figure 1. Across spatial scales, SIF can improve crop yield prediction, drought detection, varietal selection, and early-warning for water, pest and disease stress. Instrumentation to support agricultural management and applied science is most useful at within-field spatial resolution (1–30 m, pink box), where individual plants (1 m), research plots (1–5 m) or management regions (5–30 m) can be tracked explicitly. Instrumentation has been developed to different degrees (colors); handheld leaf clamps (e.g. pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) fluorometers) and satellite SIF (e.g. Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) suite (OCO-2 and OCO-3), TROPOMI, FLEX) are most established, followed by airplane-deployed imagers. Accessible near-surface tram, tower, and drone-based instruments can provide within-field information most useful to growers and agricultural scientists. Custom regions, flexible deployment platforms, and frequent observations are also important capabilities for agricultural application. Figure from Ruehr, S., Pierrat, Z.A., Parazoo, N., Keenan, T.F., 2026. Environ. Res. Lett. 21, 111007. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae74e2
Ruehr, S., Pierrat, Z.A., Parazoo, N., Keenan, T.F., 2026. Harnessing solar-induced fluorescence for on-farm agricultural research and management: recent advances and outstanding needs. Environ. Res. Lett. 21, 111007. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae74e2
