Plant life plays critical roles in regulating the earth’s climate and as the primary source of food and energy for all living things. Human understanding of and interactions with plants need to become more sophisticated to improve the sustainability, resilience, and productivity of agriculture and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on natural and managed ecosystems. Micro-, nano-, and biotechnologies have important applications in this area, for discovery and application in both crop management and breeding. I will present a brief overview of the vision of the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS – NSF STC) for a transdisciplinary effort to develop an Internet of Living Things (IoLT) in which micro-, nano-, and biotechnologies allow integration with plants to provide access to their deep biology for sensing and actuation. I will provide examples from my lab and work in our center on the application of material science, analysis of transport phenomena, biomolecular design, and biophysical modeling for sensing and reporting of continuous monitoring of in-plant responses to microenvironmental dynamics, above and below ground. These examples will illustrate the value of learning from the target biological system for the design of an appropriate, effective technology and the challenges and opportunities for the integration of devices into a field-ready IoLT for research and commercial applications.
