Detecting novel plant pathogen threats to food system security by integrating the Plant Reactome and remote sensing.

Plant diseases constantly threaten crops and food systems, while global connectivity further increases the risks of spreading existing and exotic pathogens. Here, we first explore how an integrative approach involving plant pathway knowledgegraphs, differential gene expression data, and biochemical data informing Raman spectroscopy could be used to detect plant pathways responding to pathogen attacks. The Plant Reactome (https://plantreactome.

In-vivo Raman microspectroscopy reveals differential nitrate concentration in different developmental zones in Arabidopsis roots.

Background: Nitrate (NO) is one of the two major forms of inorganic nitrogen absorbed by plant roots, and the tissue nitrate concentration in roots is considered important for optimizing developmental programs. Technologies to quantify the expression levels of nitrate transporters and assimilating enzymes at the cellular level have improved drastically in the past decade. However, a technological gap remains for detecting nitrate at a high spatial resolution.

Simultaneous Two- and Three-Photon Deep Imaging of Autofluorescence in Bacterial Communities.

The intrinsic fluorescence of bacterial samples has a proven potential for label-free bacterial characterization, monitoring bacterial metabolic functions, and as a mechanism for tracking the transport of relevant components through vesicles. The reduced scattering and axial confinement of the excitation offered by multiphoton imaging can be used to overcome some of the limitations of single-photon excitation (e.g.

Non-Destructive Direct Pericarp Thickness Measurement of Sorghum Kernels Using Extended-Focus Optical Coherence Microscopy.

Non-destructive measurements of internal morphological structures in plant materials such as seeds are of high interest in agricultural research. The estimation of pericarp thickness is important to understand the grain quality and storage stability of seeds and can play a crucial role in improving crop yield. In this study, we demonstrate the applicability of fiber-based Bessel beam Fourier domain (FD) optical coherence microscopy (OCM) with a nearly constant high lateral resolution maintained at over ~400 µm for direct non-invasive measurement of the pericarp thickness of two different sorghum genotypes.

Extended focal depth Fourier domain optical coherence microscopy with a Bessel-beam - LP mode - from a higher order mode fiber.

We present a robust fiber-based setup for Bessel-like beam extended depth-of-focus Fourier-domain optical coherence microscopy, where the Bessel-like beam is generated in a higher order mode fiber module. In this module a stable guided LP core mode is selectively excited by a long period grating written in the higher order mode fiber. Imaging performance of this system in terms of lateral resolution and depth of focus was analyzed using samples of suspended microbeads and compared to the case where illumination is provided by the fundamental LP mode of a single mode fiber.