A new textile used to cover strawberry plants more than tripled strawberry yields in tunnel field tests, without negatively impacting plant health. The technology could also significantly reduce water and pesticide usage in strawberry fields.
The cover, known as Plant Armor, is a carefully designed fabric that is draped over strawberry plants. The material's three-dimensional structure prevents insects from reaching the plants beneath. But its multiple layers allow sunlight, rain and airflow to reach the plant.
Tunnel field tests found that Plant Armor increased strawberry yields by as much as 3.56 times, without negatively impacting relative humidity or light access.
"To produce fruit, plants need sunlight," said Gabriel Olawuyi, a graduate research assistant at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper on Plant Armor. "We expected that Plant Armor's seemingly opaque fabric would lead to an increase in vegetative biomass at the expense of fruiting — because reduced sunlight would trigger a 'shade-avoidance' response, making the plant divert energy toward stem and leaf growth rather than fruit production. However, we found the fabric did not impede access to light at all, and fruit production increased significantly."
Plant Armor also provided a consistent warming effect over the three seasons that the plant grows, which Olawuyi said helped the bushes reach the fruiting stage earlier than those without the cover.
"Plants require a certain amount of accumulated heat, calculated as 'growing degree-days,' to progress through developmental stages including fruiting. Our plant cover has proven to enhance these," Olawuyi said. "The plants were in a condition whereby the warmth they need to go through each phenological stage to their production was given to them optimally, and they produced far more than the uncovered plants."
By deterring insects, Plant Armor could also reduce the need for traditional pesticides in agriculture, Olawuyi said.
Plant Armor was created as a spinoff of efforts to make military uniforms resistant to mosquito bites and more comfortable when wearing body armor - highlighting the importance of collaborative research, said co-author R. Michael Roe, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor at NC State.
"The path to Plant Armor started with trying to make a cloth to go on a soldier's chest to make body armor more comfortable," said Roe. "Then, through trial and error, we arrive at a product which could triple the output of strawberry farms here in North Carolina.
"We couldn't have predicted that when we started. Without all these people here doing research and following the science, we wouldn't have arrived at this product."
The paper, "Knitted 3-D, Porous Textile Cover to Enhance Strawberry Fruit Production and Prevent Insect Feeding," is published in the journal, Agriculture. Co-authors include James Clothier, Matthew Bertone, Grayson Cave, Reuben Garshong, Andre West, Loganathan Ponnusamy and Clyde Sorenson of NC State University.
This project was supported by a grant from the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation (grant number AG00463770). The work was also supported by the Research Capacity Fund (HATCH), project award no. 02853, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The Plant Armor Gen 2 fabric studied in this paper was patented by North Carolina State University (US Patent No. 11,582,968 B2; 21 February 2023) and is licensed for commercial development by the University. This work was a collaborative project between the NC State College of Natural Resources, Wilson College of Textiles and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
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