IDBR: Portable monitoring device for off-gassed volatile plant metabolites

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An award is made to the University of California, Davis to develop a small, mobile chemical detection platform for the plant science research community. Plant sciences in the 21st century broadly makes use of many instruments to assess plant health status and stress changes, and these instruments can be very useful to study important agriculture and horticulture systems. One key plant science research need has not been addressed by existing portable instrumentation platforms. All plants and trees produce (off-gas) volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as a normal byproduct of baseline physiological processes. These VOCs are chemicals that represent a unique non-invasive route to assess plant health, infection, nutrient stresses, and many other important biological questions. However, prior instrumentation to assess and monitor these plant VOCs has been rudimentary at best, has many manual steps, and relies heavily on laboratory-based analytical chemistry equipment. This project will create a miniature portable easy-to-use detection system for these VOCs. It will be highly sensitive and be capable of quantifying the amount of specific VOCs that are released from plants.Agriculture remains a critical portion of many national economies, and is regionally important to many communities. New scientific breakthroughs that can enhance food production and safety will ultimately have large societal and economic benefits. This project will engage in extensive outreach efforts across all education levels, bringing together trainees from multiple disciplines. Each year an undergraduate engineering student team will contribute to a technical task of the instrument development plan. Mentoring and career development for both graduate students and post-PhD researchers are a key aim of this proposal as well. Finally, this project allows for broad dissemination of the research tool to the plant science community as a new commercial product. The new VOC detection system can be broadly used by many researchers in the plant science community to investigate topics ranging from host pathogen responses to fruit quality assessment and even to assessing the effect of pest eradication efforts in field settings. The platform can ultimately be tailored for many different plant science research questions, which are likely to lead to increased agriculture performance across the world.