The program is designed to answer the question whether or not the acoustic emission signals generated by water stress induced cavitation in plants occurs prior to or during irreversible damage to plant growth. The selection of instrumentation with respect to frequency, location, signal conditioning, data processing and analysis will be evaluatedwith respect towards determination of the parameters required to establish this instrumentation technique as botha basic laboratory research tool, and field implementable system. Instrumentation development, design, and evaluationwill be conducted on both agriculturally significant species, such as grape or cotton plants, and herbaceous species, such as ferns; important for a basic understanding of the phenomena.
