Real-time active plant sensing technologies can be a valuable tool for assessing turfgrass health and performance.  However, commercially available instruments do not provide the flexibility needed to conduct basic research due to limited spectral measurement capability.  In this work, development of a new active, multi-band sensor for assessing turf quality will be discussed. This instrument will enable the agronomist or plant physiologist to spectrally configure the instrument for a variety of turf or crop sensing applications. Spectral measurements are made by the instrument via an array of polychromatic light emitting diodes and spectrally sensitive photodetectors spanning the vegetation reflectance spectrum from 420nm to 850nm.