Inkjet and Related Printing Technologies for Plant Systems: From Physiological Monitoring to Functional Biofabrication

Featuring non-contact, high-precision, and multi-material deposition, inkjet and related printing technologies offer a new alternative technique for plant systems. However, the spatial heterogeneity, continuous growth, and sensitivity of plant tissues to external perturbations make it difficult for conventional methods to target specific sites on living organs. This review evaluates thermal and piezoelectric inkjet printing, together with aerosol jet and electrohydrodynamic printing for plant applications. Moreover, it relates the jetting behavior of the printhead to interfacial processes between droplets and plant surfaces. Practical performance is assessed across four dimensions: effective feature size, organ-scale throughput, potential biological damage, and the physiological compatibility of printing inks with plants. Applications are then organized within a framework comprising five tiers: monitoring, delivery, sensing, biofabrication, and intelligent systems. Specifically, recent studies have demonstrated that these printing approaches can be employed for surface labeling and growth tracking of plant organs, localized delivery of agricultural inputs, fabrication of flexible sensors, and construction of living materials (e.g., plant cells). Combined with artificial intelligence technology, these capabilities could form a closed-loop system spanning sensing to feedback, with printing as the precision actuator, potentially shifting plant management from passive observation to active regulation. Finally, this review discusses the challenges of living-interface dynamics, ink biocompatibility, multiscale integration, and data intelligence. It further outlines the prospects of these technologies for programmable plants and living agricultural interfaces. By bridging printing technologies, plant systems, and functional biofabrication, this review provides a unified framework to guide the development of intelligent and sustainable agricultural systems.