This startup listens to plants
Wouldn’t it be weird if plants screamed when in pain, just like humans? Well, bad news for your nightmares: they kinda do, just not in frequencies humans can detect.
Sonicflora is a Swedish startup developing technology that “listens” to the ultrasonic sounds plants emit to determine what they need to thrive.
Quiet plants…
… are happy plants, Robin Jansson, CEO and co-founder of Sonicflora, told The Hustle. Stressed plants get louder the worse they feel.
For example, if a plant is dehydrated, it needs to prioritize where it stores water. What Jansson described as “negative pressure” builds, creating air bubbles that emerge and then burst, producing airborne signals, or an “ultrasonic melody.”
To train its models, Sonicflora put healthy plants in soundproof boxes, then introduced stress to capture the sounds and analyze that data. The startup is currently investigating drought, but there are other potential stressors it could explore— e.g., too much wind, too much or not enough sun, viruses, molds, or pests.
“We need to do a lot more data collection. That's farther down the road, but that's the goal,” he said.
What’s all this plant torture for?
With enough data, we’d know a plant was in trouble before visible signs of distress and could intervene.
Right now, Sonic Flora’s main focus is on tomatoes grown indoors, where it’s easier to pick up sounds.
Some greenhouses are massive — think up to 10 hectares, holding 350k plants.
That’s impossible to monitor without being incredibly selective and employing a large staff, but Sonicflora uses triangulation to locate stressed plants, ideally reducing labor costs and, ultimately, waste.
Could this be used on other plants?
Sonicflora also listens to cucumbers, while one of its customers is a university researcher who uses the tech to listen to “screaming trees.”
But Jansson said Sonicflora’s “thesis” is that 80% of plants communicate, opening the door for many applications, from vineyards to something even the average plant enthusiast could use on their own houseplants or garden.
BTW: Sonicflora does not turn its data into music, but you can vibe with PlantWave, which converts the electrical conductivity of plants into sound.
