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...
