Talking with Plants: How Sensors from Verdia Diagnostics are Looking to Transform Agriculture

Plant with Verdia Diagnostics VOC sensor (image courtesy of Verdia Diagnostics)

When people or animals get sick, they often communicate about their ailments through audible signals. A dog whines, a baby cries, a man or woman complains to their doctor about how they feel. Plants, however, have no such audible responses (unless you count the crack of a falling tree limb).  Instead, humans typically rely on visible signs of decay before learning that plants are in distress.

Unfortunately, in the world of agriculture, waiting for visible signs of disease may often be too late. And the difference between catching a plant disease early and discovering it too late can mean the difference between a thriving crop and devastating losses. What if farmers and agriculturists were able to use chemical signals to 'hear' what plants had to 'say' in order to get an early diagnosis of plant disease?

I recently had the opportunity to interview CEO and co-founder Zach Hetzler, PhD, from the startup Verdia Diagnostics. He shared with me their plan to develop and commercialize 'plant-wearable' chemical monitoring sensors that are capable of detecting plant-based disease before it's visible to the naked eye.

From Academic Research to Agricultural Innovation

Verdia Diagnostics launched officially in February 2025, but its technological roots go back much further. The company's core technology has been in development since 2019, emerging from academic research in Professor Qingshan Wei's lab at North Carolina State University as part of the WolfSens project at NC State. The WolfSens project is a consortium at NC State focused on Wearable Olfactory Sensing. What began as fundamental research supported by an NSF Convergence Grant has evolved into a potential solution for some thorny problems in modern agriculture.

"We've been working on the underpinning technology since 2019, before we even had the idea of forming a company," explains Hetzler, who transitioned from academia to lead this startup. "[The consortium] got us thinking about customer discovery." And thus began their journey into exploring the market needs for plant sensors.

In addition to Hetzler and Professor Wei, Professor Yong Zhu, PhD, is another NC State academic who brings his expertise as a co-founder and technology developer to the company.

The Technology: Listening to Plants' Chemical Conversations

At the heart of Verdia's innovation is a wearable sensor system that can be attached directly to plants to monitor volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—the chemical signals that plants use to communicate with each other, attract pollinators, and respond to environmental stresses. In other words, these VOCs are the language of plants.

It turns out that plants have unique VOC fingerprints that change when they're healthy versus sick. This change can often be sensed prior to any visible signs of disease in the plant. This provides an opportunity for sensors to allow farmers to catch disease or infestation early, before it spreads too widely.

The underlying technology relies on chemiresistive sensors, a well-established mechanism for VOC detection. The sensors use physisorption to ligands to generate resistive changes when exposed to specific compounds. However, plant VOCs present unique challenges—they're often unreactive molecules like alcohols that form only weak interactions with sensing materials.

Verdia's solution employs functionalized carbon nanotubes, chosen for their high surface area to volume ratio and excellent electrical conductivity. This approach enables the detection of difficult-to-capture VOCs while maintaining the reversible binding necessary for continuous monitoring.

In addition to VOC detection, the sensors are also capable of microenvironment monitoring: temperature, humidity, CO₂, etc. They are also capable of making measurements related to plant respiration rates and light exposure.

Many factors being analyzed from the chemical release of a plant leaf (image courtesy of Verdia Diagnostics)

While traditional approaches rely on laboratory-based GC-MS systems or basic handheld e-nose devices, Verdia's technology offers field-portable, continuous monitoring with minimal sensor drift—capable of operating for months at a time.

Central to Verdia's approach is the integration of data processing algorithms for pattern recognition and predictive analytics. The company uses principal component analysis (PCA) to distinguish between healthy and diseased plants, building a growing library of health conditions and stress responses.

Additionally, Hetzler expects that AI recognition tools will play a role in the future for recognizing and predicting patterns in the plant's chemical signaling. This data-driven approach promises to transform plant health monitoring from reactive to predictive, enabling growers to address issues before they become visible problems.

Entering the Agricultural Arena

While Verdia has made significant strides on the technical side, the company's biggest challenges—and opportunities—lie in market penetration and partnership development. The agricultural industry is generally conservative, with growers typically trusting only established companies with proven track records.

The company is initially targeting controlled environment agriculture (CEA), particularly greenhouse operations growing high-value crops such as tomatoes and cannabis. Tomatoes dominate the greenhouse produce space, while cannabis represents a high value CEA product.

Additionally, Verdia is cultivating a long-term vision of assisting farmers and agricultural centers with the appropriate data they need to optimize plant growth. The company aims to create a comprehensive solution that helps growers increase both sustainability and efficiency in their operations. Imagine a dashboard that flags adverse events and stressors, identifying what's happening within a greenhouse. This type of information would enable the detection of emerging pest problems and increase crop yield.

These techniques could also help make chemical and pesticide applications more deliberate and targeted, potentially reducing overall chemical use while improving crop outcomes. By providing real-time insights into plant stress and health, growers can make more informed decisions about interventions and limit where they apply chemical treatments to plants.

Looking Ahead

As Verdia Diagnostics builds its sensor library and explores key partnerships, it’s not just developing hardware—it’s creating a new language for agriculture. With each VOC signal and environmental data point, the company moves closer to its vision: turning plant health into actionable insight. As the agricultural industry faces increasing pressure to improve efficiency while reducing environmental impact, innovations like Verdia's wearable plant sensors could become an essential tool to feed a growing global population sustainably. If successful, Verdia could help growers shift from reactive to predictive farming, bringing us one step closer to precision agriculture that truly listens to what plants have to say.

Learn more about Verdia at their website Verdia Diagnostics.