Phenotyping xylem connections in grafted plants using X-ray micro-computed tomography.

Plants are able to naturally graft or inosculate their trunks, branches and roots together, this mechanism is used by humans to graft together different genotypes for a range of purposes. Grafts are considered successful if functional vascular connections between the two genotypes occur. Various techniques can evaluate xylem connections across the graft interface.

End-to-end multimodal 3D imaging and machine learning workflow for non-destructive phenotyping of grapevine trunk internal structure.

Quantifying healthy and degraded inner tissues in plants is of great interest in agronomy, for example, to assess plant health and quality and monitor physiological traits or diseases. However, detecting functional and degraded plant tissues in-vivo without harming the plant is extremely challenging. New solutions are needed in ligneous and perennial species, for which the sustainability of plantations is crucial.

Fijiyama: a registration tool for 3D multimodal time-lapse imaging.

Summary: The increasing interest of animal and plant research communities for biomedical 3D imaging devices results in the emergence of new topics. The anatomy, structure and function of tissues can be observed non-destructively in time-lapse multimodal imaging experiments by combining the outputs of imaging devices such as X-ray CT and MRI scans. However, living samples cannot remain in these devices for a long period.

The Tvv1 retrotransposon family is conserved between plant genomes separated by over 100 million years.

Combining several different approaches, we have examined the structure, variability, and distribution of Tvv1 retrotransposons. Tvv1 is an unusual example of a low-copy retrotransposon metapopulation dispersed unevenly among very distant species and is promising for the development of molecular markers. Retrotransposons are ubiquitous throughout the genomes of the vascular plants, but individual retrotransposon families tend to be confined to the level of plant genus or at most family.