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New Zealand's Space Science Technology Center (CSST) has partnered with NASA to measure the temperature of plants, to find out how they respond to stress.
Photo: NASA / Goddard / NPP
NASA has delivered its ECOSTRESS instrument, which is roughly the size of a refrigerator, to the International Space Station, as part of a one-year mission.
It captures temperature measurements of the Earth's surface and sends back to Earth.
CSST's Senior Scientist Dr. Dave Kelbe said like humans, when a plant's temperature was deviated from the norm, it meant something was wrong.
"When plants get too hot, they close their pores and stop sweating and they also stop taking carbon dioxide, so they stop growing."
Researchers from University of Waikato, Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), will contribute to the New Zealand-based research project.
Each of the New Zealand partners will collaborate with other countries and will be contributing their own data to the project.
Dr. Kelbe said New Zealand researchers played a key role in advancing the understanding of plants used water.
"Supporting this project with collaboration, the quality and accuracy of the data over New Zealand is elevated, if it's linked to what we're seeing on the ground, then we know we can trust the data with high confidence to make decisions."
Dr Kelbe said the data could be used for designing smart irrigation technology and getting better estimates of carbon uptake, to help meet our net zero greenhouse gas emissions targets.
He said it would not only help farmers.
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