LIFT
The LIFT provides the opportunity to quantify photosynthetic processes from a distance and can be used as a high-throughput system scanning over crop canopies. In addition to the built-in fluorometer to measure the plant fluorescence signal, the LIFT instrument is equipped with a spectrometer (spectral range 326-812 nm) and two RGB cameras.
The active light-induced fluorescence transient (LIFT) method consists of two phases, a saturation sequence (SQA) and a relaxation sequence (RQA). During these two phases, a short (< 1 s) series of excitation flashlets, barely visible to the human eye, is emitted to induce variable fluorescence (Fv) and observe fluorescence relaxation. The resulting fluorescence transient reflects the coupled kinetics of QA reduction and subsequent reoxidation. For the saturation phase, the normalization of Fv with the fluorescence maximum (Fm) provides information about the quantum efficiency of photosystem II (Fv/Fm for dark-adapted and Fq'/Fm' for light-adapted plants), which reflects the amount of photosynthetically transported electrons per photon, the most commonly measured fluorescence parameter of photosynthesis. In addition, the transient kinetics of electron transport can be quantified from the reoxidation phase, and the size of the functional and optical absorption cross-section of photosystem II can be quantified from the initial increase in fluorescence.
The LIFT was developed in close collaboration with researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the manufacturer Zbigniew Kolber (www.soliense.com). The previous model of the current LIFT was a stationary large LIFT setup equipped with a laser operating at a distance of about 20m. The reduction in size and eye-safe LED operation allowed the new LIFT system to be integrated into various positioning systems for high throughput phenotyping while maintaining its high resolution for quantifying photosynthetic fluorescence parameters.
Forschungszentrum Jülich currently has four LIFT systems at its disposal. These are used both in the laboratory and under field conditions. In the field, the LIFT is integrated into the manually moved field4cycle, the self-propelled FieldCop, the automated phenotyping platform FieldSnake, the FieldWeasel and the fully automated MiniPlot system.
Contact
- Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG)
- Plant Sciences (IBG-2)
Room 224
- Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG)
- Plant Sciences (IBG-2)
Room 406b