Overview
Infestation caused by stalk rot diseases is a common and severe threat to corn plantations. Since this damage often occurs internally within the corn stalk, detecting its extent without cutting open the stalk is challenging. Even the best statistical test designs can lead to significant plant loss, as many non-infested plants may need to be sacrificed. A better solution is to implement a nondestructive testing regimen implemented on an edge device, such as the arm of a perambulating robot. This robot could perform instant tests on individual plants, providing information on the volume of infestation damage without causing harm. In this work, we lay the foundation for such a test. We know from the physics of charge flow that electric field lines flowing through a conducting body tend to avoid any ingrained vacuums (or air pockets), on account of the markedly lower conductivity of the vacuum compared to the conducting material. The famous Calderon's problem exploits this princi…
