Silicon Carbide Solid-State Spectroscopy System for Methyl Salicylate Monitoring in Agriculture field

Methyl salicylate (MeSa) together with other organic volatile compounds (VOCs) is a substance produced by plants when they are in suffering conditions and for plant to plant communication. Monitoring levels of MeSa produced by plants in agriculture could give the possibility to estimate the health conditions of the farm. Our focus in the contest of the project, is the design and fabrication of a portable and remote controlled monitoring system based on UV optical absorbance measurements. As first step, to study the optimal system configuration, an home-made chamber was adopted for the MeSa formation, miming its release in a laboratory set-up. The optical system adopted for the tests consists of a bench deuterium lamp, equipped with a band pass filter at 313 nm, and an home made low noise and visible blind SiC UV detector. Very promising preliminary measurements were obtained monitoring MeSa volatile formation already in the order of hundreds µg/L.