Non-invasive measurement of real-time oxygen flux in plant systems with a self-referencing optrode

Abstract

This protocol describes an integration of the Non-invasive Micro-test Technique and Oxygen Optrode (NMT-OO) to quantify rhizosphere oxygen fluxes in Arabidopsis. The optrode has high sensitivity and selectivity in the measurement of oxygen concentrations and fluxes at the cellular level. In particular, application of the NMT-OO using the self-referencing method avoids environmental electromagnetic noise and hysteresis/calibration drift, providing extremely high signal-to-noise ratios for measuring biophysical transport. We successfully applied this technique to measure rhizosphere oxygen fluxes and metabolism in intact roots of Arabidopsis plants. The system we describe here is a simple and reliable method for measuring oxygen fluxes in plants and has other broad applications in cytological studies. Introduction