To date, the implementations of computer science developments in agriculture have been more common and sophisticated. Therefore, advancement in tools and system able to combine low-priced sensor components and operating system will stimulate the use of automatic protocol to be used for research purposes and precision agriculture. In this context the SunDROPS project presents three innovative set-ups (F&F automatic hydroponic system, multi-electrodes set-up for the detection of the electrical signal and the automatic LEDs light controller) to be further developed and integrated. Automatic operating systems able to control cultivation (e.g. the alternate solutions flux or light supply) could become standard systems to manipulate nutrients uptake and reallocation in plants. In particular, these methodologies are able to provide specific nutrient compositions or light to optimize the daily biological metabolism patterns known as circadian rhythms that is observed at cellular and biological level. Hydroponic cultivation as an artificial cultivation technic has been mainly used by continuously supply the ideal nutrient and light when plant metabolism is at its peak, without taking in account potential differences during each plant daily requirements. It is possible that different species of plant could respond better to daily cyclic nutrient supply or light, thus this field deserve further investigations. An automatic light can be synchronized and set to perform any cycle related to the research demand (for example increase similarly to the sunlight supplement). This light has the potential to be used for long term effect of specific light patterns on plant photosynthesis and growth/development. Successfully, it can easily be modulated to automatically supply the light based on specific daily intervals (pre-set cycles). Finally the results obtained by observing the electrical activity of the plants are promising and the methodology presented has a good potential for empirical applications. Electrical properties measurements can be used at early stage to select the most drought tolerant cultivars for increasing productivity in semi-arid conditions. Additionally, the multi-electrodes approach can be easily applied for monitoring a few plants as “biosensor” to check the status of a more numerous group of plants subjected to the same conditions. Future experiments based on this methodology on outdoor mature vegetable or trees are required, in particular accompanied with other measurements, such as stem water potential are necessary to improve their implementation. This approach, if refined, has the advantage of obtaining data directly from the plant instead of an indirect measurement of the soil or the environment and could be possibly applied for the interpretation of the signals of other stress as well.
