Ultrasensitive Biopolymer−MOF Composite-Based Pressure Sensor for Data-Driven Precision Agriculture

Plants continuously experience subtle mechanical stimuli from growth, fruit loading, and environmental stress, yet decoding these biomechanical signals remains difficult due to the lack of soft, biocompatible, and sensitive sensing materials. Herein, we report a chitosan−metal-organic framework (CS−MOF) composite as an ultrasensitive capacitive pressure sensor for precision agriculture. Incorporating MOF within a chitosan matrix creates a network with enhanced dielectric modulation and tunable compressibility, collectively improving mechanocapacitive transduction. The CS−MOF composite exhibits high pressure sensitivity (4.58 kPa −1, 0−5 kPa), rapid response/recovery times (200 ± 5/220 ± 3 ms), and excellent durability over 2000 cycles. Integrated onto tomato plants ( Solanum lycopersicum ), the sensor enables noninvasive monitoring of fruit growth and branch deformation via wireless IoT coupling, showing a strong correlation between capacitance changes and fruit mass accumulation ( R 2 = 0.95, p < 0.001). This work highlights biopolymer−MOF hybrids as promising platforms for sustainable, data-driven agriculture.