The wide spectrum of light provided by synchrotron radiation illuminates internal structure and chemical composition across scales, making it an ideal, but underutilized tool for plant and seed research. This study features an array of methodologies spanning five beamlines at the Canadian Light Source located in Saskatoon, Canada, to demonstrate the breadth of structural and chemical insights that are made possible by synchrotron-based research. Synchrotron micro-computed tomography (S-µCT) imaging revealed the three-dimensional internal structural landscape of seeds in exquisite detail. Synchrotron X-ray methods that probe chemical landscapes, including X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging and spectroscopy in the infrared spectrum, were used to spatially map the distribution of micronutrients (for elemental distributions and speciation data) and macronutrients (e.g., proteins, carbohydrates and lipids) across seed subcompartments. Spectromicroscopy (SM), employing synchrotron-based soft X-rays, probed sample biochemistry with nano-scale resolutions. Seed datasets presented span a range of valued food and crop species, including Citrullus sp. (watermelon), Pisum sativum (pea), Brassica sp. (canola), and Triticum durum (wheat), to showcase the broad potential for synchrotron imaging to inform plant and agricultural research.
