James Hutton Institute invests £1.75 million in latest hi-spec lab equipment

Dr William Allwood, metabolomics facility lead at The James Hutton Institute using the UHLC Orbitrap IQ-X high resolution MS.

“With this system we can compare the content of health beneficial metabolites, such as vitamins and antioxidants, as well as flavour relevant compounds, such as those that provide bitter or sweet flavour”

The James Hutton institute has invested more than £1.75 million in new, state-of-the-art laboratory equipment to enhance its leading independent scientific research capabilities across food, plant and soil health and quality.

The largest investment is in what is the only one of its kind Scotland, a combined ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHLC) and high-resolution mass spectrometer (MS).

The high precision instrument, based at the independent research institute’s Invergowrie campus, near Dundee, allows scientists to perform extremely detailed analysis on individual plant and organic compounds faster and with far less manual work than its predecessor machine.

A second machine, based at the institute’s Craigiebuckler campus in Aberdeen, is an advanced scanning electron microscope (SEM), which can image down to nanometre-scale – or a billionth of a meter – plant tissues and other materials.

Dr William Allwood, metabolomics facility lead at The James Hutton Institute, says, the ThermoFisher UHLC Orbitrap IQ-X high resolution MS is the most powerful of its type currently available. It allows scientist to separate plant, fruit, vegetable or processed food extracts into their individual biochemical components.

“With this system we can compare the content of health beneficial metabolites, such as vitamins and antioxidants, as well as flavour relevant compounds, such as those that provide bitter or sweet flavour,” he says.

“That means we can compare the nutritional and flavour quality of fruits, cereal grains and vegetables that have been grown in different ways, we can assess the effects of storage and processing on foods and we can also assess the effects of different agricultural practices on the growing plants.

“We can also assess the biochemical impacts of environmental stress, such as, drought, flooding or heat, and also plant pests and diseases, helping to identify plant varieties that are resistant or less susceptible to these stressors.”   

The new Gemini 300 ZEISS SEM is sensitive enough to allow scientists to obtain high resolution images of parts of plants down to a nanometre scale. This means they can see, from observing the detailed structure of tissues and cells, how plants react to changes in their environment, from heat stress from climate change to the fertiliser they use, so that plants can be bred for future conditions.

They can also look what minerals are present and where they are in plants to understand, for example, the nutritional value of its different parts. Scientists can also use this to observe interactions of microplastics with components of the soil.

Additional investments by The James Hutton Institute include a carbon and nitrogen analyser, used for understanding the content of these elements in soils and plants, which can help to understand how much carbon is being stored in or lost from soil.