Saturas

About: Can trees tell us what they need?

Most precision agriculture solutions rely on soil-level sensors to monitor moisture, nutrients, and field conditions. Saturas, an agtech innovator based in Israel, went deeper – literally – embedding sensors directly into trees to capture data on their real-time water status.

The company’s miniature sensor technology, designed specifically for orchard crops, provided growers with continuous insight into Stem Water Potential (SWP), a scientifically recognized measure of plant stress and a practical tool for irrigation management.

By integrating these readings into a cloud-based decision support system, growers could optimize irrigation in ways that improved plant health, increased yields, and conserved scarce water resources.

Challenge: Growing more while using less

Fruit and nut orchards represent both an economic powerhouse and a major challenge for water sustainability. In California alone, almonds account for around 10% of the state’s total water use. Faced with high-value but thirsty crops, many growers historically leaned toward overwatering “just to be safe.”

The problem is that this safety margin comes at a cost. Excess irrigation wastes water, increases the risk of runoff-related soil contamination, and can even reduce crop quality by encouraging disease or diluting nutrient concentration.

With limited and imprecise measurement systems, growers lacked the tools they needed to manage irrigation precisely, leading to a cycle of inefficiency at a time when water scarcity and climate pressures made smarter management more urgent than ever.

Solution: Better measurement for better health

Stem Water Potential is often described as the plant equivalent of blood pressure: a direct, reliable indicator of stress. Historically, it could only be measured manually with equipment dating back to the 1960s, an impractical solution for large-scale or continuous monitoring.

Saturas’ StemSense™ sensor solved this challenge by embedding directly into the tree and transmitting continuous SWP readings via cellular IoT. This gave growers something close to a plant scientist in every orchard, offering moment-to-moment visibility into water stress and plant health.

Crucially, the system also supported strategic use of controlled water stress. In almonds, for example, carefully timed moderate stress reduced fungal disease during hull split; in prunes, it encouraged sugar accumulation pre-harvest; in walnuts, it reduced the risk of root disease. These benefits meant growers could not only save water but also improve yield quality and market value.

Why Soracom: Centralized management and cost savings

When Saturas began U.S. field deployments, they initially tried working with a large telecom provider. But issues with billing, SIM management, and overhead quickly became barriers to scaling. One month, usage notifications even ended up routed to the trees themselves.

Switching to Soracom streamlined operations. Soracom’s management console gave the team a single interface to monitor all sites, check data usage, and track SIM status. Just as importantly, Soracom’s pay-as-you-go pricing aligned with real-world agricultural deployments, where seasonal usage patterns vary dramatically.

“Soracom allows us to manage and monitor all our sites on one platform, and check the data usage and activity status of each site in one interface. Furthermore, Soracom’s pay-as-you-go approach reduced our costs dramatically. The model of paying only for the data we use works very well for us.”

Anat Bujanover

General Manager, California

Saturas

The Bigger Picture: Precision irrigation for a water-scarce world

Although Saturas itself ceased operations in 2023, the challenges it addressed remain more relevant than ever. Orchard crops continue to represent billions in economic value and a disproportionate share of agricultural water use, particularly in regions like California’s Central Valley.

The lessons of Saturas’ approach – direct plant monitoring, continuous cellular data collection, and targeted irrigation management – show how IoT can help agriculture grow more with less. By measuring and managing water stress at the plant level, growers can reduce waste, improve fruit quality, and make better use of every drop of water.

As global agriculture confronts intensifying water scarcity and climate change, precision irrigation powered by IoT connectivity will remain a cornerstone of sustainable farming, helping farmers protect yields, protect resources, and protect the future of food.