The day highlighted the full range of imaging techniques available to improve our understanding of plant biomass, from the molecular level right up to the tissue level, by bringing together complementary areas of expertise around three main themes: fluorescence imaging, spectroscopic imaging and high-resolution chemical imaging.

Fluorescence imaging

• Gabriel Paës (FARE) – Fluorescence imaging (FillingGaps project)
• Hugo Chauvet & Amandine Leroy (SOLEIL Synchrotron) – UV fluorescence imaging on the DISCO beamline, focusing on Deep-UV excitation microspectroscopy
• Kalina Haas (IJPB) – Zooming Into Plant Growth: Decoding Cell Wall Dynamics with rapid FLIM and optogenetics (AppleStorm Project)

Spectroscopic imaging

• Camille Rivard (INRAE–SOLEIL) – X-ray fluorescence imaging of plants at the synchrotron
• Christophe Sandt (SOLEIL Synchrotron) – New possibilities for characterising plant cell walls using infrared microspectroscopy on the SMIS beamline
• Luminita Duma (ICMR) – Characterisation of biomass using solid-state NMR and MRI (Amaretto Project)
• David Touboul (LCM) – The contribution of mass spectrometry imaging to exploring the chemical diversity of biomass (Micro-Mass Project)

High-resolution chemical imaging

• Laurène Tétard (ISA) – Exploiting Infrared Light-Matter Interaction to Advance Nanoscale Characterisation of Lignocellulosic Systems (Nano2BioReact Project)
• Oriane Morel (BIA) – A new workflow for multimodal and multiscale analysis of the parietal structure of maize stems, combining AFM, Raman and MSI (FillingGaps Project)

Beyond acquiring ever-higher-performance images, it is essential to develop robust quantitative approaches, based on reproducible analyses and a sufficient number of replicates, in order to guarantee the reliability and scope of the results.

The day continued with a tour of the SOLEIL Synchrotron and several of its beamlines, providing an opportunity to discover exceptional instruments used in research.

A big thank you to all the speakers, the partner laboratories, the teams from the PEPR B-BEST and the SOLEIL Synchrotron, and the organisers Amandine Leroy and Gabriel Paës, who made this wonderful scientific day possible and ensured its success.