A simple and low-cost method for fluoride analysis of plant materials using alkali extraction and ion-selective electrode.

Backgrounds: Existing methods for fluoride (F) determination in plant material require expensive equipment and specialized reagents. This study aimed to develop a simple and cost-effective method for fluoride analysis in plant samples.

Results: Using an orthogonal assay design with certified reference material, this study optimized a sodium hydroxide extraction method (5 mol·L) with heating at 120 °C for 0.

Photosynthetic variation for climate-resilient crops: photosynthetic responses to fluctuating light and chilling in tomato.

An increase in global demand for crop-based products necessitates an increased crop yield. Optimizing photosynthesis, which is sensitive to environmental fluctuations, offers a promising strategy to improve crop yield and resilience. Photosynthetic responses often lag behind changes in irradiance, resulting in the loss of potential carbon gain.

Engineering of nicotianamine synthesis enhances cadmium mobility in plants and results in higher seed cadmium concentrations.

Efficient biofortification, i.e., the enrichment of edible plant organs with micronutrients available for human consumption, is pursued through breeding and genetic engineering approaches.

Arabidopsis thaliana Zn transporter genes ZIP3 and ZIP5 provide the main Zn uptake route and act redundantly to face Zn deficiency.

In response to Zn deficiency, plants are thought to adjust Zn homeostasis through the coordinated expression of Zn transporters. Zn transporters are identified in the ZIP, HMA and CDF families of cation transporters, although only few are characterized. We determined gene expression over time, root-specific location of expression and phenotypes of single and double loss-of-function mutants of several Arabidopsis thaliana transporters, known to be induced by Zn deficiency.

Advances in digital camera-based phenotyping of Botrytis disease development.

Botrytis cinerea is an important generalist fungal plant pathogen that causes great economic losses. Conventional detection methods to identify B. cinerea infections rely on visual assessments, which are error prone, subjective, labor intensive, hard to quantify, and unsuitable for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications.

Species-wide inventory of organellar variation reveals ample phenotypic variation for photosynthetic performance.

Efforts to improve photosynthetic performance are increasingly employing natural genetic variation. However, genetic variation in the organellar genomes (plasmotypes) is often disregarded due to the difficulty of studying the plasmotypes and the lack of evidence that this is a worthwhile investment. Here, we systematically phenotyped plasmotype diversity using as a model species.

Expanding the Triangle of U: Comparative analysis of the Hirschfeldia incana genome provides insights into chromosomal evolution, phylogenomics and high photosynthesis-related traits.

Background And Aims: The Brassiceae tribe encompasses many economically important crops and exhibits high intraspecific and interspecific phenotypic variation. After a shared whole-genome triplication (WGT) event (Br-α, ~15.9 million years ago), differential lineage diversification and genomic changes contributed to an array of divergence in morphology, biochemistry, and physiology underlying photosynthesis-related traits.

Cross-species transcriptomics reveals differential regulation of essential photosynthesis genes in Hirschfeldia incana.

Photosynthesis is the only yield-related trait not yet substantially improved by plant breeding. Previously, we have established H. incana as the model plant for high photosynthetic light-use efficiency (LUE).

Unveiling Nanoscale Heterogeneities at the Bias-Dependent Gold-Electrolyte Interface.

Electrified solid-liquid interfaces (SLIs) are extremely complex and dynamic, affecting both the dynamics and selectivity of reaction pathways at electrochemical interfaces. Enabling access to the structure and arrangement of interfacial water in situ with nanoscale resolution is essential to develop efficient electrocatalysts. Here, we probe the SLI energy of a polycrystalline Au(111) electrode in a neutral aqueous electrolyte through in situ electrochemical atomic force microscopy.

House dust mite sublingual allergen immunotherapy tablet is safe and well-tolerated in Dutch clinical practice.

Background: Half (49%) of clinically diagnosed allergic rhinitis (AR) patients are sensitized to house dust mite (HDM). If allergen avoidance and symptomatic medication fail, allergen immunotherapy may be indicated.

Objective: We investigated safety and tolerability of HDM-sublingual immunotherapy by HDM-SLIT tablets in Dutch daily clinical practice.

LeTra: a leaf tracking workflow based on convolutional neural networks and intersection over union.

Background: The study of plant photosynthesis is essential for productivity and yield. Thanks to the development of high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) facilities, based on chlorophyll fluorescence imaging, photosynthetic traits can be measured in a reliable, reproducible and efficient manner. In most state-of-the-art HTP platforms, these traits are automatedly analyzed at individual plant level, but information at leaf level is often restricted by the use of manual annotation.

NICOTIANAMINE SYNTHASE activity affects nucleolar iron accumulation and impacts rDNA silencing and RNA methylation in Arabidopsis.

In plant cells, a large pool of iron (Fe) is contained in the nucleolus, as well as in chloroplasts and mitochondria. A central determinant for intracellular distribution of Fe is nicotianamine (NA) generated by NICOTIANAMINE SYNTHASE (NAS). Here, we used Arabidopsis thaliana plants with disrupted NAS genes to study the accumulation of nucleolar iron and understand its role in nucleolar functions and more specifically in rRNA gene expression.

Optical Characterization of Plasmonic Indium Lattices Fabricated via Electrochemical Deposition.

The optical properties of periodic metallic nanoparticle lattices have found many exciting applications. Indium is an emerging plasmonic material that offers to extend the plasmonic applications given by gold and silver from the visible to the ultraviolet spectral range, with applications in imaging, sensing, and lasing. Due to the high vapor pressure/low melting temperature of indium, nanofabrication of ordered metallic nanoparticles is nontrivial.

Ion Current Rectification and Long-Range Interference in Conical Silicon Micropores.

Fluidic devices exhibiting ion current rectification (ICR), or ionic diodes, are of broad interest for applications including desalination, energy harvesting, and sensing, among others. For such applications a large conductance is desirable, which can be achieved by simultaneously using thin membranes and wide pores. In this paper we demonstrate ICR in micrometer sized conical channels in a thin silicon membrane with pore diameters comparable to the membrane thickness but both much larger than the electrolyte screening length.

A genome-wide association study identifies novel players in Na and Fe homeostasis in Arabidopsis thaliana under alkaline-salinity stress.

In nature, multiple stress factors occur simultaneously. The screening of natural diversity panels and subsequent Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) is a powerful approach to identify genetic components of various stress responses. Here, the nutritional status variation of a set of 270 natural accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana grown on a natural saline-carbonated soil is evaluated.

The genome sequence of Hirschfeldia incana, a new Brassicaceae model to improve photosynthetic light-use efficiency.

Photosynthesis is a key process in sustaining plant and human life. Improving the photosynthetic capacity of agricultural crops is an attractive means to increase their yields. While the core mechanisms of photosynthesis are highly conserved in C plants, these mechanisms are very flexible, allowing considerable diversity in photosynthetic properties.

Construction and analysis of a Noccaea caerulescens TILLING population.

Background: Metals such as Zn or Cd are toxic to plant and humans when they are exposed in high quantities through contaminated soil or food. Noccaea caerulescens, an extraordinary Zn/Cd/Ni hyperaccumulating species, is used as a model plant for metal hyperaccumulation and phytoremediation studies. Current reverse genetic techniques to generate mutants based on transgenesis is cumbersome due to the low transformation efficiency of this species.

Multimodal synchrotron X-ray fluorescence imaging reveals elemental distribution in seeds and seedlings of the Zn-Cd-Ni hyperaccumulator Noccaea caerulescens.

The molecular biology and genetics of the Ni-Cd-Zn hyperaccumulator Noccaea caerulescens has been extensively studied, but no information is yet available on Ni and Zn redistribution and mobilization during seed germination. Due to the different physiological functions of these elements, and their associated transporter pathways, we expected differential tissue distribution and different modes of translocation of Ni and Zn during germination. This study used synchrotron X-ray fluorescence tomography techniques as well as planar elemental X-ray imaging to elucidate elemental (re)distribution at various stages of the germination process in contrasting accessions of N.