European Network on NMR Relaxometry

I am interested in the study of water flux in plants. Specialy in tomato plants under abiotic stress like, water, salt, temperature stress. I am using NMRI and NMR facilities to study the evolution of flux along time and space in different part of tomato such as, stem, peduncle, pedicel, abscission zone and early development fruit. A mathematical and insilico model of the tomato plant has been developed in the agronomic research center of INRA Avignon. The purpose of these studies is to find some characteristic and values which allow us to precise this model. Using NMRI facilities lead to spacialy qualify the evolution of flux in the tomato but also to create some high resolution 3D imaging wich give us some interesting informations about the structure of tomato plant. In an other hand, using NMR facilities give us informations about the quantity of water moving throught the plant along time. Coupling these studies with other data such as temperature, humididy, light, stem diameter variations but also photonic microscopy image allow us to verify and explain our data from NMRI and NMR facilities. My research interests are not only on the understanding of the plants functionning but also on the way to observe it wich mean in instrumental and NMRI/NMR development. The instrumental part is about developing NMRI/NMR probe/antena adapted to the different studies we want to realize. The NMRI/NMR developent is about create NMRI/NMR sequence to get informations about the differents relaxation time T1 and T2 of the sample. As relaxometry is the mean source of contrast, I want to evaluate how relaxometry will allow me to get valuable NMRI/NMR data.