Special Issue "Phytosensors: Environmental Sensing with Plants and Plant Cells"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. C. Neal Stewart, Jr.
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, 2431 Joe Johnson Dr., Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
Website: http://plantsciences.utk.edu/stewart.htm
E-mail:

Because plants are nearly ubiquitous and keystone elements in most ecosystems, scientists have long envisioned using them as environmental sentinels for the sensing of stress and diseases in agricultural systems to toxic chemicals and biological agents outside of agriculture. One way to accomplish this would be to use unique spectral signatures from ‘native’ plants, and while spectra from vegetation tends to be messy, progress has been made. However, as biotechnological and genomic developments have emerged, the promise of genetically engineered sentinel plants has emerged. There are a number of hurdles to implementation such as problems with signal-to-noise and specificity of outputs, but the science has progressed nonetheless. This special issue captures the latest developments in phytosensor science and technology and also points the way to the future. Phytosensors are still in their infancy, and so it is exciting to witness growth and achievements as the science breaks through various hurdles looking toward the day when ‘talking’ plants can act as unmanned sensors to report on crucial components in the environment.

Submission

Sensors (http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/) is a highly rated journal with a 1.573 impact factor in 2007.
Sensors is indexed and abstracted very quickly by Chemical Abstracts, Analytical Abstracts, Science Citation Index Expanded, Chemistry Citation Index, Scopus and Google Scholar.

All papers should be submitted to sensors@mdpi.org with copy to the guest editors. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at the special websites.

Please visit the instructions for authors at http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/publguid.htm before submitting a paper. Open Access publication fees are 1050 CHF per paper. English correction fees (250 CHF) will be added in certain cases (1300 CHF per paper for those papers that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.).

phyto sensors