THE
BIOTOOL PLATFORM PROJECT
Biotool is an automatic platform to monitor plant transpiration and water use in real time, under fully controlled greenhouse conditions.
This platform was designed by Landlab to support research, product development and screening activities where precise measurements of Water Use Efficiency (WUE) are essential.
What is Biotool?
Biotool is an automatic platform to monitor plant transpiration and to quantify how plants respond to different water, nutrient and biostimulant regimes. Each pot is placed on an electronic balance and connected to an automated irrigation system, enabling high‑frequency measurements and precise control of water supplied. This makes Biotool ideal to investigate drought stress scenarios, irrigation strategies and the effect of innovative inputs on plant performance.
The platform records weight changes over time, translating them into transpiration curves and cumulative water use. By standardizing environmental conditions and irrigation events. Moreover, Biotool allows robust comparisons between treatments, genotypes or products, reducing noise and improving the quality of the data.
Why an automatic platform to monitor plant transpiration?
Using an automatic platform to monitor plant transpiration helps researchers and companies move beyond simple biomass or yield measurements. It is well known that transpiration is a dynamic process, strongly influenced by environmental conditions and management, and provides early insights into how plants cope with stress. With Biotool, it is possible to link transpiration patterns with growth, physiological parameters and final yield, generating a more complete picture of Water Use Efficiency (WUE) and plant behaviour.
This information is particularly valuable when testing biostimulants, fertilizers, substrates or irrigation technologies that claim to improve tolerance to water deficit or optimize water use. Biotool makes it possible to quantify these effects with high temporal resolution.
Applications of Biotool platform
We use Biotool platform in greenhouse trials to:
- compare varieties or genotypes under controlled water deficit;
- evaluate the impact of biostimulants and other inputs on transpiration and WUE;
- optimize irrigation strategies and fertigation programs;
- generate robust datasets to support registration, positioning and marketing claims.
Thanks to its modular design, we used Biotool with different crops and experimental designs. We integrated Biotool data with other measurements performed at Landlab, such as phenotyping or analytical quantification of enzymes or metabolites.
THE PROJECT
