HISTORY AT BITNET

Especially in the early 90's, several organizations have supported a range of small budget research projects performed at BITNET-RCSS, concerned with the design of new tools for vegetation monitoring.
The starting point of this initiative was ten years ago, with the aim to directly access environmental data from the sensorial system of some living organisms. A joint initiative of Babes-Bolyai University Department of Biology and Bioelectronics Research Laboratory (which is the precursor of BITNET-RCSS).
However, for technological and financial reasons, this (too ambitious) project rapidly failed into a much smaller one, concerned with vegetation only.

Research has been focused on several topics, ranging from ultra structure investigation with electronic microscopy in order to get information for cell/tissue - electronic circuits interface design and bioelectrical activity monitoring, to data processing and environmental monitoring devices development. All these devices monitor the dynamics of some physiological parameters of plants in order to detect perturbations induced by changes in their physical or chemical environment.

A few examples are listed below:

• climatic changes investigation through hydric balance monitoring in trees
• hydric stress detection
• Pollution detection through gas exchange monitoring in aquatic plants
• leaf movements monitoring in nyctinastic plants.

---