Researchers Observed Plants Slurping Water For The Very First Time

Flavius Pascut, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, and along his team were able to monitor plants' innards at work while they drank in real time by using a gentle imaging approach in a novel way.

Water is not only necessary for plants to survive, but it also serves as a vehicle for carrying other nutrients, minerals, and vital proteins throughout the living structures. The ability of plants to transfer the valuable liquid around efficiently can have a significant impact on their ability to withstand harsh weather conditions.

Webb stated that they used a sensitive, laser-based optical microscopy technology to see water movement within living roots non-invasively, that has never been done previously, to monitor water absorption in living plants without hurting them.

While Raman micro spectroscopy detects how light photons disperse from a restricted laser beam, allowing for real-time molecular imaging in natural settings without the need for molecular tagging.

The technology is so precise that it can detect molecule bond mass and orientation. This means that contrast can be achieved by substituting deuterium oxide, sometimes known as heavy water, for ordinary water. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope that has a neutron in addition to the ordinary lone proton, doubling its mass. Although heavy water has somewhat different properties than normal water, it is close enough to normal water to not cause physiological changes in tiny amounts.

During 80 seconds of exposing the roots of the researchers' most carefully investigated plant, the scan revealed a pulse of heavy water. The absorbed water was only discovered in the inner part of the roots, where the water-transporting xylem of root tissues occurs, indicating that this initial water absorption is not shared with surrounding tissues on its route up from the roots to the rest of the plant.

The process will enable the researchers to get to know about the crops in a better way and would help them in the future for more productive cultivation of several crops. The aim is to enhance global food productivity by identifying and utilising plant types that have the best chance of surviving in any specific environment, regardless matter how dry or wet it is.

Meanwhile, cells are much smaller than plants', Pascut and his team are working on a portable version of the scanning technology that enables for more approachable field studies. They also feel that this technique could be employed in healthcare monitoring devices.