Abstract
Plants produce various volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are thought to be a crucial factor in their interactions with harmful insects, plants and animals. Composition of VOCs may differ when plants are grown under different nutrient conditions, i.e., macronutrient-deficient conditions. However, in plants, relationships between macronutrient assimilation and VOC composition remain unclear. In order to identify the kinds of VOCs that can be emitted when plants are grown under various environmental conditions, we established a conventional method for VOC profiling in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) involving headspace-solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatography-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-TOF-MS). We grew Arabidopsis seedlings in an HS vial to directly perform HS analysis. To maximize the analytical performance of VOCs, we optimized the extraction method and the analytical conditions of HP-SPME-GC-TOF-MS. Using the optimized method, we conducted VOC profiling of Arabidopsis seedlings, which were grown under two different nutrition conditions, nutrition-rich and nutrition-deficient conditions. The VOC profiles clearly showed a distinct pattern with respect to each condition. This study suggests that HS-SPME-GC-TOF-MS analysis has immense potential to detect changes in the levels of VOCs in not only Arabidopsis, but other plants grown under various environmental conditions.
Highlights
Plants and animals, including humans and microorganisms, can produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
We performed HS-solid phase microextraction (SPME)-Gas chromatography (GC)-TOF-Murashige and Skoog (MS) to confirm that the growth medium and water for cultivating Arabidopsis seedlings contained no volatile substances
VOC profiling using HP-SPME-GC-TOF-MS can distinguish between profiles with respect to each nutrient condition
Summary
Plants and animals, including humans and microorganisms, can produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Sensitive methods have been developed for headspace (HS) sampling and VOC analysis. Fast isoprene sensor chemiluminescence detection (FIS), laser-based infrared photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy and proton transfer reaction–mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) enabled us to conduct real-time detection of VOCs from plants [18]. One ultimate goal of metabolomics is to identify and quantify the metabolome in organisms, which includes VOCs. Development of MS-based technologies in metabolomics enables the measurement of. Volatile compounds in each vial were collected using an appropriate SMPE fiber and analyzed by using HS-SPME-GC-TOF-MS in a non-targeted manner. We performed VOC profiling in the HS of Arabidopsis seedlings grown under two nutrient conditions as a case example. The annotated VOCs were determined by performing multivariate analysis and t-tests as discriminative parameters between the two conditions
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