Imaging frozen wood anatomy in SOLEIL synchrotron

Anna was joining a very interesting measuring campaign in the Anatomix beamline in SOLEIL synchrotron with French colleagues from INRAE.

They imaged gas - ice dynamics in frozen wood samples at 0.3 micrometer resolution and saw very interesting gas bubbles trapped in ice inside the wood (i.e. xylem). Understanding gas - ice dynamics in frozen wood is important, because the presence of gas makes the xylem vulnerable for hydraulic failure during thawing. They also visualized pits in samples with different freezing treatments (at 0.1 micrometer resolution) to learn if the freezing process can damage them. Pits are important part of the water transport pathway in trees, because they connect the xylem elements to each other. What an interesting and *cool* trip!