Leaf wetness duration (LWD) is an important measurement in agricultural meteorologysince it is a determining factor to pathogen infection and critical to the rate of plant
disease development. Currently, there are commercially available electronic LWD sensors
implemented in crop management systems, and, although, these sensors are robust
and highly precise, they are unable to fully mimic the surface and wetting properties of
real leaves. To mitigate the limitations of commercially available leaf wetness sensors
(LWS), I developed a bio-mimetic sensor that closely replicates the surface properties
and hydrophilicity of the leaves using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) double-casting
technique. Measurements taken from the modified LWS suggest that from three different
leaf species, the commercialized LWS is capable of closely matching the wettability
of only one of the corresponding leaves. This proof of concept shows that bio-mimetic
leaf wetness sensors can better represent plant leaves and, therefore, not only verifies
the commercialized LWS’s limited effectiveness but also demonstrates the importance
of incorporating wettability into future LWS sensor development.