The "Plant Whisperer" Offers Guidance on Learning the Language of Your Plants

Posted by Brian Sparks|February 14, 2020

Looking for expert advice on optimizing the environmental conditions in your greenhouse for better plant growth and crop production? The University of Arizona’s (UA) Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Biosystems Engineering department are hosting a joint seminar featuring Peter van Weel, PhD., Professor Emeritus at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands and founder of Weel.Invent Corp.

Known as “The Plant Whisperer,” van Weel spent most of his career at Wageningen University & Research working on optimizing environmental conditions for plant growth and crop production. He is credited with developing a multitude of innovative systems including ebb and flow irrigation, automatic greenhouse roof cleaning, and aquaponics systems, among others.

Van Weel’s company Weel.Invent is focused on developing integrated low investment and uncomplicated production systems for greenhouse cultivation. More recently, he has focused his attention on an interdisciplinary, comprehensive approach to the integration of sensor-derived data from the growing plants and the greenhouse environment in which they reside to optimize crop production by listening to what the plants are saying, while focusing on the language which the plants are communicating to the grower. van Weel claims that “it is just not enough to hear the plant speak, we also need to understand its language.” The key to understanding this language lies, according to van Weel, in being able to assess whether the plants are able to keep their balances in equilibrium, and for the grower then to maintain such equilibrium via environmental regulating mechanisms. This approach to plant growth optimization is contained in the principles of “Plant Empowerment” which he will discuss in the seminar.

“Plant Empowerment-A Comprehensive Approach to Optimizing Plant Growing and Crop Production” takes place on Monday, Feb. 24, at 12:00 MST. Go to Ceac.arizona.edu/events/seminar-series to register.