Soil Technology from the Medical Industry

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

What do the medical industry and soil science have in common? Well, more than you might think. Dr. Christopher Topp, principal investigator and associate member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center says soil scientists have begun using X-ray technology originating from biomedical research to get a deeper analysis of root systems.

Topp... "We still do quite a lot of digging roots in the field and digging trenches and things like that. But we've also been able to bring in technologies that were, in fact, developed in biomedical sciences, right, with all of that research support. So, for example, my group runs two x-ray tomography systems. It's the same technology that if you go to the dentist or you know, you have an ailment and go to the doctor and get an x-ray scan you would use to to learn about the human body. Well, we can see roots with x-rays. That's the nice thing about them. We can see soil structure. We can see microbes that are living on the roots that are living on the soil and I could I could go on but that's the mindset is to develop new technologies or bring them in from other areas and really learn how to apply them to roots. Once we're able to get a good idea of what's the best kind of root system for a particular environment, we can then learn about mechanisms that allow us to breed or otherwise, you know, develop technologies that can improve root systems."

Again that’s Donald Danforth Plant Science Center principal investigator and associate member, Dr. Christopher Topp.