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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] CT scanning shows why tilting trees produce better biofuel
  • Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:22:51 -0400

CT scanning shows why tilting trees produce better biofuel
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_11-3-2015-10-56-50

CT scanning shows why tilting trees produce better biofuel

by Hayley Dunning
<http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_11-3-2015-10-56-50#authorbox>
11 March 2015

CT scan of willow showing fibre (brown) and vessels
(blue)

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.
Our research will help the biofuel sector select and use growing sites and
conditions where no other crops can survive.

– Dr Nicholas Brereton

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 is published today 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.

-
“X-ray micro-computed tomography in willow reveals tissue patterning of
reaction wood and delay in programmed cell death
<http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/15/83>” 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 Biolo*



  • [permaculture] CT scanning shows why tilting trees produce better biofuel, Lawrence London, 03/15/2015

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