X-Ray Fluorescence Ionomics of Herbarium Collections

Antony van der Ent, Guillaume Echevarria, Joseph Pollard, Peter D. Erskine*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

62 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Global herbaria are the greatest repositories of information on the plant kingdom. Discoveries of trace element hyperaccumulator plants have historically required time-consuming destructive chemical analysis of fragments from herbarium specimens, which severely constrains the collection of large datasets. Recent advances in handheld X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) systems have enabled non-destructive analysis of plant samples and here we propose a new method, which we term “Herbarium XRF Ionomics”, to extract elemental data from herbarium specimens. We present two case studies from major tropical herbaria where Herbarium XRF Ionomics has led to the discovery of new hyperaccumulator plants and provided valuable insights into phylogenetic patterns of trace element hyperaccumulation. Herbarium XRF Ionomics is a new value proposition for continued funding and retention of herbarium specimens globally.

Original languageEnglish
Article number4746
JournalScientific Reports
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

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