Hydroponics: A Versatile System to Study Nutrient Allocation and Plant Responses to Nutrient Availability and Exposure to Toxic Elements

Abstract

Hydroponic systems have been utilized as one of the standard methods for plant biology research and are also used in commercial production for several crops, including lettuce and tomato. Within the plant research community, numerous hydroponic systems have been designed to study plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Here we present a hydroponic protocol that can be easily implemented in laboratories interested in pursuing studies on plant mineral nutrition.This protocol describes the hydroponic system set up in detail and the preparation of plant material for successful experiments. Most of the materials described in this protocol can be found outside scientific supply companies, making the set up for hydroponic experiments less expensive and convenient.The use of a hydroponic growth system is most advantageous in situations where the nutrient media need to be well controlled and when intact roots need to be harvested for downstream applications. We also demonstrate how nutrient concentrations can be modified to induce plant responses to both essential nutrients and toxic non-essential elements.

Changes in iron availability in Arabidopsis are rapidly sensed in the leaf vasculature and impaired sensing leads to opposite transcriptional programs in leaves and roots

“…For plants cultured hydroponically, seeds were first germinated on ¼ MS plates and after 2 weeks, seedlings of uniform size were transferred to hydroponic cultures. As described elsewhere (Jobe et al, ; Nguyen, McInturf, & Mendoza‐Cózatl, ), no additional copper was added to the hydroponic solution. During germination, plants first acquired Cu from the MS media (25 nM in the one‐fourth MS recipe) and later from the hydroponic solution.…”

“…Plants were grown hydroponically as described previously (Nguyen et al, ). After a total of 4 weeks (bolting stage), roots and rosette leaves were harvested and used for RNA extraction.…”

“…Plants were grown hydroponically as described previously (Nguyen et al, 2016). with the exception that only reads with one valid alignment were reported, resulting in 381 million valid alignments (Kim et al, 2013).…”

Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles Affect Heavy Metals Uptake by Pea in a Divergent Way than Their Ionic and Bulk Counterparts

“…It facilitates prompt separation of root tissues with a special emphasis put on fine root hairs and precise administration of nutrients. In particular, plants grown in controlled homogeneous liquid solution are more uniform and give statistically significant, reproducible results (Nguyen et al 2016).…”

Fuzzy Mamdani Implementation for Hydroponic Water Content Automation

“…Hydroponic systems have been used as one of the standard methods for plant biology research and are also used in commercial production for several plants [1]. Hydroponics in the community in general still use manual systems and are relatively expensive in terms of time, including measurement of acid levels (pH) and nutrients in plants that use hydroponic plant maintenance methods and determine the volume of water used to optimize the system that has been realized.…”