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

授予加州大学戴维斯分校为植物科学研究界开发一个小型移动的化学检测平台的奖项。 世纪的植物科学广泛使用多种仪器来评估植物健康状况和胁迫变化，这些仪器可以非常有用地研究重要的农业和园艺系统。 一个关键的植物科学研究需要尚未解决现有的便携式仪器平台。 所有的植物和树木都会产生（废气）挥发性有机化合物（VOC），作为基线生理过程的正常副产品。 这些挥发性有机化合物是代表一种独特的非侵入性途径来评估植物健康，感染，营养压力和许多其他重要的生物学问题的化学品。然而，评估和监测这些工厂VOC的现有仪器最多也只是初步的，具有许多手动步骤，并且严重依赖于基于实验室的分析化学设备。 该项目将为这些VOCs创建一个微型便携式易于使用的检测系统。 它将具有高度的灵敏度，能够量化植物释放的特定挥发性有机化合物的数量。农业仍然是许多国家经济的重要组成部分，对许多社区具有区域重要性。 能够提高食品生产和安全的新的科学突破最终将产生巨大的社会和经济效益。 该项目将在各级教育中开展广泛的外联工作，汇集多学科的受训人员。每年，一个本科工程学生团队将为仪器开发计划的技术任务做出贡献。 指导和职业发展的研究生和博士后的研究人员也是这个建议的一个关键目标。 最后，该项目允许将研究工具作为一种新的商业产品广泛传播给植物科学界。 新的VOC检测系统可被植物科学界的许多研究人员广泛用于调查从宿主病原体反应到水果质量评估甚至评估田间环境中害虫根除工作的影响等主题。 该平台最终可以针对许多不同的植物科学研究问题量身定制，这可能会提高世界各地的农业绩效。

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.