Biology subjects

Webb, A. A. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Webb, A. A. R..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Leaf movements as a quantitative metric for early stress detection

Early, precise, and non-destructive stress detection is essential for maintaining crop productivity, particularly in high-density plant growth systems like controlled environment agriculture (CEA), where manual monitoring is often impractical. Using plant motion as a proxy for growth and plant health, we demonstrate a method for early, non-invasive stress detection through quantitative leaf-movement analysis in lettuce and five other CEA relevant crops. Leaf-movement dynamics under stress were imaged with a low-cost, scalable Raspberry Pi imaging setup and quantified using a repurposed open-source motion estimation algorithm; Tracking Rhythms in Plants (TRiP). Our system detected stress-induced changes in leaf-movement within 1 hour of stress, with the timing dependent on the nature of the stress. Sustained reductions in leaf-movement coincide with decreased biomass accumulation. This approach offers a non-invasive, rapid, scalable, and cost-effective solution for continuous crop monitoring, with potential for application in both terrestrial and space farming CEA systems. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=138 SRC="FIGDIR/small/732190v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (54K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@19ee20eorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@b0804org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@3b3fa8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d04026_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG O_FLOATNOGraphical abstract:C_FLOATNO Quantification of leaf-movement dynamics as a high-throughput proxy for plant physiological status, enabling early stress detection and timely intervention to mitigate yield penalties in CEA settings (image made with biorender.org). C_FIG

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Wheat EARLY FLOWERING3 is a dawn-expressed circadian oscillator component that regulates heading date

Using an eight-parent Multiparent Advanced Generation Inter-Cross (MAGIC) population we investigated how variation at circadian clock-associated genes contributes to the regulation of heading date in UK and European winter wheat varieties. We identified homoeologues of EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3) as candidates for the Earliness per se (Eps) D1 and B1 loci in field conditions. We confirmed that a SNP within the coding region of TaELF3-B1 is a candidate polymorphism underlying the Eps-B1 locus. We found that a reported deletion at the Eps-D1 locus encompassing TaELF3-D1, is instead a novel allele that lies within an introgression region containing an inversion relative to the Chinese Spring D genome. Using T. turgidum cv. Kronos carrying loss of function alleles of TtELF3 we show that ELF3 does regulate heading by demonstrating that the loss of a single ELF3 homoeologue was sufficient to alter heading date. These studies demonstrated that ELF3 forms part of the circadian oscillator but loss of all homoeologues was required to affect circadian rhythms. Similarly, loss of functional LUX ARRHYTHMO (LUX) in T. aestivum, an orthologue of a protein partner of Arabidopsis ELF3, severely disrupted circadian rhythms. ELF3 and LUX transcripts are not co-expressed at dusk suggesting the structure of the wheat circadian oscillator might differ to that of Arabidopsis. Our demonstration that alteration to ELF3 homoeologues can affect heading date separate from effects on the circadian oscillator suggests a role for ELF3 in cereal photoperiodic responses that could be selected for, without pleiotropic deleterious alterations to circadian rhythms.

plant biology↗