New “plant armour” more than triples strawberry yields
SCIENCE
A newly developed textile covering is helping strawberries produce more than three times as much fruit, while showing no harmful effects on plant health. Researchers say the technology may also offer a way to reduce water use and reliance on pesticides.
The fabric, called Plant Armor, is designed to be placed directly over strawberries. Its three dimensional structure creates a barrier that stops insects reaching the plants, while the layered material still allows sunlight, rain, and air to pass through.
In tunnel field tests, strawberries covered by Plant Armor produced yields as much as 3.56 times higher than uncovered plants. The fabric didn’t reduce light nor negatively affect relative humidity.
“To produce fruit, plants need sunlight,” says Gabriel Olawuyi, a graduate research assistant at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper on Plant Armor. “We expected Plant Armor’s seemingly opaque fabric would lead to an increase in vegetative biomass at the expense of fruiting — because reduced sunlight would trigger a ‘shade-avoidance’ response, making the plant divert energy toward stem and leaf growth rather than fruit production. However, we found the fabric did not impede access to light at all, and fruit production increased significantly.”
Researchers also found that Plant Armor created a steady warming effect throughout the three growing seasons. That extra warmth helped covered plants reach the fruiting stage earlier than plants grown without the textile.
“Plants require a certain amount of accumulated heat, calculated as ‘growing degree-days’, to progress through developmental stages including fruiting. Our plant cover has proven to enhance these,” Olawuyi says.
Because Plant Armor physically prevents insects from feeding on the plants, fewer conventional pesticides could be needed, Olawuyi notes.
The idea behind Plant Armor didn’t begin with farming. Rather, it came from researching how to make military uniforms more resistant to mosquito bites and improve comfort for soldiers wearing body armour.
“The path to Plant Armor started with trying to make a cloth to go on a soldier’s chest to make body armour more comfortable,” says co-author R. Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor at NC State. “Then, through trial and error, we arrive at a product that could triple the output of strawberry farms here in North Carolina. We couldn’t have predicted that when we started. Without all these people here doing research and following the science, we wouldn’t have arrived at this product.”
ABOVE Strawberries grown with and without the Plant Armor textile cover
PHOTO Gabriel Olawuyi, NC State University
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