Cheat sheet for non-scientists?

[Bob Haugen]

I think this would be useful. You might have already written it and I am blind.

But it would go something like:

Photosynq measurement (photosynthesis, SPAD, etc)

What does that tell you about the plant? (e.g. SPAD tells you something about nitrogen?)

What are the good and bad ranges of values?

And maybe some other tidbits that I don't know enough to ask about?

In general, what does the device tell you that you can't tell by just looking at the plant. 

Or as my grandpa used to do, chewing on it. But then you'd need his trained taste detection sensors...

[Greg Austic]

We're working on a 'The Science of PhotosynQ' video, which we just shot some video on.  It's going to do those very things (hopefully we'll do it well!). 

Also, Sebastian now has a really awesome analysis tool, which has explanations for what the measurements are and what 'normal' ranges are built in.  It'll also have a help section describing what kind of analysis may be useful and help interpreting results.  That should be up on the site in a week or two, and when it is I'll share it with everyone.

Today I worked on a CO2 evolution protocol, where you can tell the device to measure CO2 content for x amount of time, or until the change in CO2 becomes zero for y amount of time.  This is so we can measure soil biological activity, plant respiration, and mold in seeds.  This can help distinguish between C3 and C4 plants, identify biologically rich or poor soil, and probably lots of other stuff (we're hoping you'll help with that). 

Let me see if I can get a page together explaining the measurements better - I'll shoot out an email once I'm finished.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Greg

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Greg Austic

2198 Seminole Dr.

Okemos, MI 48864

(919) 545 1083

Work -www.photosynq.org

Personal - www.austiclabs.com

[Bob Haugen]

Good news! Plus:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 9:53:32 PM UTC-6, Greg Austic wrote:

Today I worked on a CO2 evolution protocol, where you can tell the device to measure CO2 content for x amount of time, or until the change in CO2 becomes zero for y amount of time.  This is so we can measure soil biological activity, plant respiration, and mold in seeds.  This can help distinguish between C3 and C4 plants, identify biologically rich or poor soil, and probably lots of other stuff (we're hoping you'll help with that).  

Yes! Yes! All the soil analysis we can get! 

[Greg Austic]

Ok - cheat sheet is up!  Please throw any responses my way on what may be confusing (some things probably will be) and what you think could be improved (typos, other improvements), or any additional links.  Basically just wanted to lay out the protocols we've developed so far and what outputs they generate.  Also, we'll be adding to it in the future, so it's certainly not static.

http://photosynq.org/multispeq-measurements/

For beginners, the most interesting ones are Photosynthetic Efficiency and SPAD.  Hope to have interesting CO2 based measurements up there soon as well, so keep an eye out for that.

For you hard core plant science folks, you can see there are several measurement outputs that are not described here for longer protocols - like NPQ which requires Fv/Fm and a dark adapted sample.  Later on, when you guys create your own protocols, you'll be able to specify those outputs and any others you might want.  But for now I stuck to the basics :)

Also, we're going to enable those creating new protocols to define their terms - so if you come up with some new output from your protocol called TYQ (for example), you can also add a definition for TYQ so users will know what the heck your talking about.  T hat definition will pop up for users whenever they hover over that word on our website.  I think one of the hardest parts of talking about photosynthesis and it's machinery is the inconsistency and complexity of the language itself so hopefully we can simplify that.

Greg

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[Bob Haugen]

That's a great start. I'll study it and the links about the measurements.

But here's what I would look for next: what are the practical
implications of each of the measurements for a farmer or gardener?

What's the "good" range? If a plant is out of the good range, what
should you do?

That's probably a tall order, and I expect that the good range varies
from species to species and probably the age of the plant as well.

But I will mostly be exposing the device to farmers, gardeners and
high school students who are working on a school garden, so that's
what they (and I) will want to know.

[Greg Austic]

Some do have clear outcomes from high or low values (like SPAD and photosynthetic efficiency) though they may not directly tell you what's wrong just that something's wrong, and yes they definitely vary by species and other factors.  But some of these don't have a clear 'if x is high, then do y'.  Stuff like ECS is kind of like reading tea leaves to the casual observer...  .  The more I've talked to folks in our lab, I get the sense that ECS could actually be a very powerful predictor, but the fact is there's not that many people who truly understand it and there's not much data on it outside of model species like arabidopsis.

So after all that handwaving, it's a really important point Bob so we should work on it here and hopefully soon as a sensor community :)

Does anyone else have any good articles, literature, or suggestions on this topic?

Greg

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