Imaging the distribution of agrochemicals in plants by MALDI-MSI.
type: CreativeWork
description: Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to control weeds, pests and diseases. Successful control is dependent on the compound reaching the target site within the organism after spray or soil application. This is influenced by a range of physiological and environmental factors. One such factor is uptake into foliar tissue and roots and subsequent movement through the plant. Uptake and translocation (and metabolism) can affect the speed and persistence of action, crop selectivity and weed spectrum, thus understanding these issues is of great importance. Conventional methods for determining uptake and movement of herbicides and pesticides include autoradiography, liquid scintillation and chromatographic techniques such as HPLC. Autoradiography using radiolabelled compounds provides the best indication of a compound's movement within the plant system which is an established technique but relies on radiochemical synthesis. The cost and time taken means that only a relatively few agrochemicals can be studied in this way.MALDI is a highly adaptable soft ionisation technique that was established in the late 1980's through the developmental research of Tanaka and Hillenkamp. The versatility of MALDI-MS has been extended in recent years with the advent of protein profiling and imaging directly from the surface of thin biological tissue sections. Research by Caprioli et al has resulted in the successful profiling and imaging of proteins from thin sections of healthy mouse brain and mouse brain containing tumor and the profiling of proteins from a neurotoxin induced rat modelof Parkinson's disease. Recently the imaging technique has been further developed by research groups to include the detection and imaging of small organic molecules on the surface of porcine epidermal tissue and the surface of rodent brain tissue. In preliminary studies undertaken to support the grant application for this project the detection and imaging of compounds on the surface of a plant leaf or ins…
abstract: Pesticides are widely used in agriculture to control weeds, pests and diseases. Successful control is dependent on the compound reaching the target site within the organism after spray or soil application. This is influenced by a range of physiological and environmental factors. One such factor is uptake into foliar tissue and roots and subsequent movement through the plant. Uptake and translocation (and metabolism) can affect the speed and persistence of action, crop selectivity and weed spectrum, thus understanding these issues is of great importance. Conventional methods for determining uptake and movement of herbicides and pesticides include autoradiography, liquid scintillation and chromatographic techniques such as HPLC. Autoradiography using radiolabelled compounds provides the best indication of a compound's movement within the plant system which is an established technique but relies on radiochemical synthesis. The cost and time taken means that only a relatively few agrochemicals can be studied in this way.MALDI is a highly adaptable soft ionisation technique that was established in the late 1980's through the developmental research of Tanaka and Hillenkamp. The versatility of MALDI-MS has been extended in recent years with the advent of protein profiling and imaging directly from the surface of thin biological tissue sections. Research by Caprioli et al has resulted in the successful profiling and imaging of proteins from thin sections of healthy mouse brain and mouse brain containing tumor and the profiling of proteins from a neurotoxin induced rat modelof Parkinson's disease. Recently the imaging technique has been further developed by research groups to include the detection and imaging of small organic molecules on the surface of porcine epidermal tissue and the surface of rodent brain tissue. In preliminary studies undertaken to support the grant application for this project the detection and imaging of compounds on the surface of a plant leaf or ins…
author: Anderson, David Michael Germaine.
language: en
date published: 2009
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:31:12Z
provider: Sheffield Hallam University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom).