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For the reason of global shortage of water resources, a novel irrigation system capable of saving water can effectively alleviate this pressure. As the main organs of plants, surface topography parameters of leaves provide the information of plants such as water content, and the most remarkable parameter is leaf thickness. The thickness of leaf is fluctuating with leaf tissue’s water content, so the information on whether the plant is under water stress or not can be obtained by measuring leaf thickness. After solving measurement of leaf thickness and conducting some experiments, the correlation between leaf thickness and water content was found, which shows a significant positive correlation, and a linear model was established to describe their relationship. All these proved that a strong correlation exists between the two parameters and this can be utilized to get the information on water demand of plant from the macro observable value-thickness of plant leaves. Finally the novel water-saving irrigation system controlled by plant itself was established,which is very useful for the development of agriculture. This task is under implementation now.