A biophotonic approach as a non-invasive tool for monitoring plant health and environmental stress responses
Zsolt Ponya; Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Budapest, Hungary; University of Siena, Italy
Abstract
Measuring biophoton emission offers a promising, non-invasive approach to assessing plant stress associated with oxidative metabolism. We have investigated the potential of this approach for monitoring plant responses to different stress factors. Experiments involving biotic and abiotic stressors revealed that stress can alter not only photon emission intensity but also its temporal pattern. This suggests that studying emission kinetics may provide information not only about stress severity but also about the physiological response associated with different stress conditions.
However, despite its potential, reliable UPE measurement in plants remains challenging due to the photosynthetic nature of plant tissues producing delayed fluorescence (DF) effects that can overlap temporally and spectrally with spontaneous UPE. In addition, plant tissues contain chlorophyll and other photoactive compounds, while oxidative reactions generate excited molecular species that contribute to emission. Charge-recoupling and related charge-transfer processes may further complicate the interpretation of the detected signal, therefore, disentangling the spatio-temporal kinetics of UPE-signals is a prerequisite for exploring the potential of this approach in crop production/protection practices.
Our endeavours are centred around attempts aimed at establishing a reproducible relationship between plant physiological state and the intensity, timing and spatial distribution of UPE. Once this is achieved, UPE imaging could become a useful complementary method for early stress detection in plant phenotyping and precision agriculture.
Speaker
Zsolt Ponya
Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Budapest, Hungary; University of Siena, Italy
Hungary
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