The £1.8m CHIST-ERA project - dubbed 'Transient Electronics for Sustainable ICT in Digital Agriculture' - is led by researchers from the University of Glasgow and supported by colleagues in Canada, Finland, Poland and Switzerland.

CHIST-ERA is the coordination and co-operation activity of national and regional research funding organisations, supported by the EU's Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme.

Over the next three years, the partners will work together to develop a new type of environmentally friendly modular sensor system.

Their intention is to find ways to create devices built from sustainable and degradable materials, with the aim of cutting down on the growing problem of electronic waste.

The devices in development will have two parts: a solar-powered patch, which can be applied to the surface of the leaves of crops to measure key indicators of their growth, and an electronic module, which can wirelessly...