PMCS-phenology-data

We investigated the long term functionality of the designed PMCS in a practical use case where we monitored plant growth of classical horticulture Dianthus flowers (Dianthus carthusianorum) under the effect of plastic mulching over a period of 4 months. This use case represents a common phenological monitoring case that can be used in agricultural studies. For this, we integrated our PMCS in an embedded vision camera equipped with the openMV H7 Plus board in a waterproof housing [26]. The system shown in Fig. 5(b), is powered by 3 internal parallel lithium-ion batteries with a total capacity of 10Ah and recharged with an external 270mm by 180mm solar panel harvesting up to 5W.

Plastic mulching has been shown to increase soil temperature and humidity, and to result in better yield [39]. It is predicted to change ecosystem services across multiple spatial scales [40]. Six plant monitoring boxes were constructed and then randomly allocated into control (i.e., untreated soil; n=3) and MP treatments (i.e., soil spiked with MP concentration of 4g/l soil; n=3). The plastic particles size of up to 0.5mm was chosen based on existing studies of known particles sizes to affect plant growth [41]. Before mixing in plastic particles, the total amount of soil was mixed and then distributed equally across all six boxes to minimize variation from different lighting and humidity conditions. The boxes were placed 20cm apart from each other to assure statistical independence of boxes as shown in Fig. 5(a). The experiment took place in Hangzhou, China (30.34257°E, 120.03787°N), from September 2023 to January 2024 covering the summer, autumn, and winter in Hangzhou. In case of insufficient rain, we watered the boxes every 3 days.