PRIME@MUSE promotes advances in plant drought resistance in collaboration with regional companies.
With the support of the Occitanie Region, PRIME@MUSE will enable advances in research on plant drought resistance in collaboration with regional companies. The Charles Coulomb Laboratory has received PRIME funding to set up the tools needed to study drought resistance.
The aim is to find a drought-resistant variety of sunflower. The variations in thickness of the different layers that make up a leaf, their refractive index and absorption coefficient were measured during dehydration on previously selected sunflower lines.
This study was conducted as part of a collaboration between the Charles Coulomb Laboratory (Dominique Coquillat),the joint research unit Technologies & Methods for Tomorrow's Agriculture (INRAE – Ryad Bendoula, head of ANR OptiPAG), the Fresnel Institute in Marseille (Claude Amra), and Innolea (a plant genetics and genomics research company).
Thanks to the work of research teams and funding from the "MUSE" program (Occitanie Region), which rewards innovative research conducted with companies, researchers have been able to develop a technique that allows the different layers to be identified without destroying the plant.
Funding for a large-sample pulsed terahertz spectroscopy imaging device was made possible because researchers are working in synergy with regional companies interested in this innovative technique.
"The ultimate goal is to contribute to plant improvement (sunflowers in this example) by promoting their adaptation to stressful environmental conditions. To this end, our terahertz research, funded in part by PRIME@MUSE, aims to help evaluate favorable leaf characteristics and develop terahertz tools that enable continuous observation of plants under stressful conditions,"explains Dr. Dominique Coquillat.
This is a significant regional advance, as it represents a valuable future tool for companies to potentially understand why certain genotypes are resistant to drought.
References:
Yannick Abautret, Dominique Coquillat,Myriam Zerrad,Ryad Bendoula,Gabriel Soriano,Daphné Héran,Bruno Grèzes-Besset,Frédéric Chazallet, andClaude Amra"Optical thickness of a plant leaf measured with THz pulse echoes," Proc. SPIE 11279, Terahertz, RF, Millimeter, and Submillimeter-Wave Technology and Applications XIII, 112790L (March 2, 2020);