http://phys.org/news/2015-03-ct-scanning-tilting-trees-biofuel.html
[images in on-line article]
CT scanning shows why tilting trees produce better biofuel
March 11, 2015
Imperial researchers have used medical imaging techniques to explore why
making willow trees grow at an angle can vastly improve their biofuel
yields. Using micro-CT scans, the team showed that the trees respond to
being tilted by producing a sugar-rich, gelatinous fibre, which helps
them stay upright.
Willows are suitable for widespread cultivation as biofuels because they
produce large quantities of accessible sugar, are fast-growing and can
tolerate harsh environmental conditions, such as windy slopes and poor
soil. In fact, trees grown in harsher conditions or polluted soil can
even produce better biofuel because the sugar they produce is more
accessible, requiring less energy to harvest it.
Growing the willow trees at a 45-degree angle simulates this natural
stress, encouraging the trees to produce up to five times more sugar
than plants grown normally. But exactly why and how this happens has not
been clear until now.
Researchers at Imperial College London worked with experts at the
Natural History Museum, the University of Surrey and Rothamsted Research
Centre to use X-ray micro-computed tomography (CT scanning) to examine
the willow's growth through high resolution 3D images.
This enabled them to see the changes in the willow at a cellular level
and how they affected the plant's growth. They found that tilted willows
prolonged the life of certain cells in order to produce a sugar-rich, or
gelatinous, fibre, to help them stay upright. The team were able to
measure how much longer the cells needed to stay alive to produce the
special fibre.
"It was difficult to see why the trees were releasing so much more sugar
when stressed in nature or grown at an angle. Being able to visualise
the differences occurring at a microscale, or cellular level, allowed an
insight into the biology behind the macroscale effects on the whole
tree," explains Dr Nicholas Brereton, from Imperial's Department of Life
Sciences.
"Willow is a great crop because it grows in really inhospitable places.
It can add value to marginal land and is also useful for helping to
clean up areas of polluted land," adds Dr Brereton. "Our research will
help the biofuel sector select and use growing sites and conditions
where no other crops can survive."
The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council, and published in BMC Plant Biology. The next step for
the team will be to use even higher resolution CT scanning to
investigate the gelatinous fibres in more detail. The aim will be to
measure how much of the fibre is produced by different plants, which
will help identify which species of willow are likely to be the world's
best 2nd generation biofuel producers.
As well as being a valuable research tool, the use of CT scanning
techniques to look into plants and animals is also an extremely useful
teaching resource, believes Dr Brereton. He is already working with the
colleagues at Imperial College to integrate 3D micro-images into
undergraduate teaching.
"Students would recognise this sort of imaging from medicine, but the
greatly increased resolution of X-ray micro-CT at the NHM means we can
explore the biological world in a thousand times more detail, and in
3D," says Dr Brereton.
More information: "X-ray micro-computed tomography in willow reveals
tissue patterning of reaction wood and delay in programmed cell death"
by Nicholas Brereton (Imperial College London and Université de
Montréal), Farah Ahmed and Daniel Sykes (Natural History Museum),
Michael Jason Ray (Imperial College London), Ian Shield and Angela Karp
(Rothamsted Research) and Richard James Murphy (University of Surrey),
is published today in BMC Plant Biology.
www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/15/83
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