Synchrotrons accelerate and bend electron beams in order to create tangential, high flux photons across a wide energy range. While synchrotrons are quite difficult to access with very expensive beamtime, there are several powerful analytical modalities accessible through this approach including X-ray crystallography, infrared microscopy, powder diffraction, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and...
MOGNO beamline, from the 4th generation Light Source in Brazil, Sirius, will be focused on high throughput, time resolved experiments and multi-scale analysis. This beamline will work in high energies (22, 39 keV, and 67.5 keV), with a cone beam geometry that enables continuous magnification of the image, from ~55 µm to ~120 nm, known as zoom-tomography. In addition, MOGNO will be equipped...
Synchrotron light sources have provided x-ray-based tools that supported a wide range of research in biological, geological, geochemical, and environmental sciences for decades. The ongoing generational upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) facility takes advantage of a new light source design, better instrumentation, and novel methods. When completed, the upgraded APS will be one of the...
We describe and present examples of synchrotron-based confocal x-ray fluorescence microscopy (CXRF) employing custom-fabricated collimating channel array optics (CCAs), developed at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, which permit CXRF to be performed with micron-scale, achromatic resolution. Subsequent to their development, CHESS-fabricated CCAs have been employed as part of the APS...
Organizing Committee welcomes attendees of PALSA
Food and economic security for smallholder cassava farmers in sub-Saharan Africa is threatened by Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD). CBSD causes brown necrotic lesions within the storage roots, rendering them inedible and unmarketable. RNAi technology was applied to develop cassava with durable, high-level, resistance to CBSD. Sequences from the coat proteins (CP) of CBSV and UCBSV were...
Deficiencies of metal micronutrients commonly limit plant growth and crop yields. Furthermore, as most people rely on plants as their dietary source of micronutrients, plants that serve as better sources of essential nutrients would improve human health. We combine genetics, high throughput elemental analysis via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and high-resolution...
Concerns about Food Security and on how to address issues relevant to this global challenge are recurrent and had a worldwide landmark during The World Food Summit, in 1996. Meanwhile, Soil Security is a new concept that has been treated as crucial to guarantee Food Security only after the declaration of the International Year of Soils, in 2015. The assessment and proposition of...
Synchrotron techniques have been used to investigate a range of processes in soils and plants. While these applications were initially addressing environmental issues related to pollution, recent years have seen increasing interest in using synchrotron approaches for agricultural research. This presentation will focus on new methodologies developed to address some major challenges related to...
Micronutrients copper (Cu) and iron (Fe) are essential for plant growth but can be toxic when over-accumulated in cells. Thus, plants tightly regulate their root uptake systems to prevent deficiency while avoiding toxicity. This includes balancing Cu/Fe accumulation via the Cu-Fe crosstalk and systemic shoot-to-root signaling through the phloem to report the shoots’ demand. However, only...
Seeds undergo a tightly regulated developmental program throughout their germination. Although mineral nutrients are crucial during all phases of a plant’s life cycle, little is known regarding their role in tissue differentiation. Herein, both synchrotron and benchtop-based X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy approaches revealed that manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe) exhibit particular ‘stripe-like’...
CARNAÚBA is an acronym for Coherent X-ray Nanoprobe Beamline, which is a nanofocused, multi-analytical and coherent X-ray imaging beamline of Sirius, the 4th generation synchrotron source of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory. Its design is all-achromatic mirror-based optics, with a 4-bounce Si(111) crystal monochromator (4CM) that provides resolving power of E/E =10-4 in...
Characterizing Phosphorus in Agriculture and the Environment at the Nanoscale
Phosphorus (P) is a key nutrient in fertilizers. Yet it is sourced from non-renewable resources, is inefficiently utilized, and accumulates in terrestrial systems such as soils and freshwater resources, causing harmful algal blooms and fish kills. Advanced characterization techniques are needed to understand the...
The development of higher brilliance and faster repetition rate X-Ray sources offer higher throughput analysis opportunities for applications based on Tomography, Coherent Diffraction Imaging (CDI) or Ptychography. These benefits can be exploited with the recent advances in sCMOS (scientific Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) image sensors, which offer a unique combination of fast frame...
Amino acids are part of the primary structure of proteins. Additionally, they are precursors of several chemicals and, in plants, they are able to mitigate the deleterious effects of stress. In Brazil, several companies have been trading commercial products based on amino acids as stimulants of plant metabolism. They also claim that the amino acids contribute to the absorption and transport of...
The speciation of C and N in soils using x-ray absorption spectroscopy is an important capability for soil research as it requires minimal sample pre-treatment and provides improved characterization of mineral associated organic material. One of the main limitations of the technique is the low throughput associated with limited synchrotron access, difficult sample transfer processes and the...
Synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy techniques are useful for understanding the ionome of biological materials, including plants, at the tissue or cellular level. Nevertheless, sample preparation is crucial and challenging as both tissue structure and elemental composition need to be preserved. In this study, we explored the Synchrotron Laboratory to establish suitable...
It has been known for decades that the micronutrient copper is essential for plant growth, development, fertility, and seed/grain yield. However, which plant reproductive organs require copper, how copper is delivered to these structures, and how it acts to ensure fertility is not entirely understood. I will report our recent studies deriving from the use of synchrotron x-ray fluorescence...
The distribution of elements within plant tissues can provide important information for a wide range of plant science studies, for example, functional characterization, improving nutrition or plant health, climate adaptation, or contaminants’ effects and movement. Synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence imaging surpasses other methods suitable to determine elemental and chemical species...
Euphorbia peplus (petty spurge, Euphorbiaceae) is an emerging developmental model system for the study of laticifers, the cells that produce and contain plant latex. In other plant families, synchrotron X-ray fluorescence has been used to image laticifers in intact plant leaves, e.g. to study hyperaccumulator species. Previous synchrotron X-ray fluorescence studies on Euphorbia latex...
Climate change and lack of sustainable lifestyles are some of the most critical challenges of our civilization today. It is imperative to change our manufacturing systems and lifestyles to be in-tune with the carrying capacity of our planet. One of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, excessive water consumption and pollution is agriculture. By changing how we eat, we can...
The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) is a global initiative to create an open, publicly accessible database, not only to catalog the world’s edible biodiversity but to understand the association between food composition, human health, and planetary health. Yet food composition data are rarely interoperable, making it difficult to aggregate, analyze, and draw conclusions from data drawn...
The Structural Molecular Biology resource at SSRL develops, operates, and supports three dedicated XRF imaging beamlines that cover a range of spatial scales (µm to cm) and elements of biological importance. These beamlines can perform µ-XAS to characterize the oxidation state, or chemical species, at a single point within a sample. Chemical imaging using synchrotron XRF imaging lends itself...
The deficiency of calcium can have a detrimental effect on the quality and shelf life of fruits. In addition to appropriate soil fertilization, foliar sprays containing Ca2+ sources present an alternative solution to prevent and address this issue. X-ray fluorescence microanalysis was utilized to observe the foliar absorption of CaCl2, Ca-citrate complex, and Ca3(PO4)2 nanoparticles, with and...
Calcium is a macronutrient that plays in all stages of development of tomato fruit such as cell division, cell metabolism, cell wall formation, and fruit maturation. The Ca concentration in these stages showed a decreasing profile as the fruit developed. Since Ca reaches upper plant tissues through root-to-shoot uptake, its supply is strongly reduced as the xylem loses its functionality in...
Phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S) are some of the essential elements for agriculture and environmental sciences research. The VLS-PGM beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) is one of the few beamlines in the Americas that is built to optimize the delivered flux below 250eV, to access the L-edges of those elements. The beamline endstation has also been improved to perform XANES measurements...
Spatial evaluations are powerful tools in understanding function of structures within complex tissues. Distribution of elements within animal tissues are not commonly performed using X-ray fluorescence and represents an opportunity for expansion. Animal tissues are commonly preserved in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) blocks and large libraries of normal and diseases tissues are...
Infrared (IR) spectroscopy at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) Mid-IR beamline provides a suite of analytical options for investigation of biological samples which include bulk IR, IR imaging, and attenuated total internal-reflectance (ATR) IR-imaging capabilities. Protein, lipids, carbohydrates and other organic molecules possess distinct vibrational band features within the Mid-IR spectrum...
Canola contributes around $30 billion to the Canadian economy each year, from oil processing and as an animal feed due to the high protein content of the meal by-product. Protein and oil occur as discrete bodies in canola seed cells, however, information on the compartmentalization of these discrete bodies (e.g., size, number, arrangement) within cellular ultrastructure to changes in overall...
The foliar fertilisation with zinc (Zn) and manganese (Mn), essential micronutrients on vegetal metabolism, contributes to increasing crop species' productivity. Due to their widespread deficiency in weathered soils, this is particularly important in Brazil, the most important producer of coffee worldwide. Although foliar-based strategies often regard the use of chelates, such as EDTA, their...
Physicochemical interactions between soil organic matter (SOM) and iron (Fe) minerals contribute to long-term protection and storage of organic carbon in soils. However, the persistence of Fe-stabilized SOM depends on environmental controls on the redox state and solubility of Fe. In this work, we show that frequent wet-dry cycles in mineral soils result in distinct Fe-SOM interaction...
Ptychography is a lensless X-ray diffraction microscopy technique [1,2,3] in which the sample is scanned at pre-defined positions collecting far-field diffraction patterns at each of these scanning positions. The diffraction patterns along with the information regarding the scan positions are then processed using iterative phase retrieval algorithms resulting in high resolution complex...
MOGNO beamline, from the 4th generation Light Source in Brazil, Sirius, will be focused on high throughput, time resolved experiments and multi-scale analysis. This beamline will work in high energies (22, 39 keV, and 67.5 keV), with a cone beam geometry that enables continuous magnification of the image, from ~55 µm to ~120 nm, known as zoom-tomography. In addition, MOGNO will be equipped...
Discoveries in soil chemistry have benefited human health by enhancing our food, water, and air quality and remediating contaminated soils and waters. Soil chemical principles-based discoveries have been deployed and adopted to solve agricultural and environmental problems, including developing new fertilizer technologies and science-based-management practices to improve fertilizer-use...
The Center for Structural Molecular Biology (CSMB) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a national user facility funded to support and develop the user access and science research program of the Biological Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (Bio-SANS) instrument at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Bio-SANS is dedicated to the analysis of the structure, function and dynamics of complex...
Approximately one third of global land area is covered by high pH, alkaline soils that are deficient in one or more essential elemental nutrients, potentially limiting the productivity of agricultural crops. Nutrient deficiencies, especially iron (Fe), can stem from the insolubility of the metal, preventing their dissolution and limiting bioavailablity. Iron deficiency causes anemia in more...
We rely on soil to support the crops on which we depend. Less obviously we also rely on soil for a host of 'free services' from which we benefit. For example, soil buffers the hydrological system greatly reducing the risk of flooding after heavy rain; soil contains very large quantities of carbon, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate...
Soil pore structure plays a key role in transport and fate of soil chemicals, gases, microorganisms, and defines rates of biogeochemical reactions. Marked heterogeneity of soil solid and pore spaces and complexity of the pore networks lead to formation of highly spatially and temporally variable zones of enhanced microbial activity. Such zones are commonly referred to as “hot spots” and “hot...
Knowledge of the nano-architecture of plant structures gives insights into basic physiological processes and is also useful for biotechnological purposes such as biomass deconstruction for industrial processing. High-resolution imaging techniques such as electron-based microscopies are crucial to access cellular ultrastructure. However, more precise quantification of structure at such level of...
At the nanoscale, materials acquire unique physico-chemical properties that can be manipulated for tailored purposes and as such, there has been an important increase in nanoparticles (NPs) used in a range of sectors, including agriculture. Nano-enabled agriculture is at the early stages of development but we strongly believe it is a road that may lead directly to sustainable global food...
The widespread use of metal-based nanoparticles (MNPs) can have significant applications and implications in agriculture and the environment. Several MNPs have positively influenced plant growth and have been used as nano-fertilizers and nano-pesticides. However, their extensive use in agriculture and the environment may result in the increased accumulation of metals in agricultural soil that...
Determining mechanisms that regulate plant-nutrient behavior in agricultural soils is often confounded by interactions between physical, chemical, and biological processes within these multicomponent, heterogeneous, and hierarchical systems. This presentation will focus on strategies and examples of addressing these complexities by using complementary techniques at multiple Sirius beamlines....
Legume-rhizobia symbiosis, the most efficient plant N2 fixing system, has been long recognized as a sustainable alternative to the use of nitrogen (N) fertilizers. Previous histological studies have provided a detailed description of anatomical structure of root nodules in 2 dimensions. Nodules consist of two functionally important tissues: (1) a central infected zone (CIZ), colonized by...
Food and economic security for smallholder cassava farmers in sub-Saharan Africa is threatened by Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD). CBSD is caused by the two Ipomoviruses, Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV) and transmitted by African cassava whitefly Bemisia tabaci, and by farmers who plant infected stem cuttings to establish the next cropping...
Theme: Grand Challenges in Ag, including multi-scale science
