{"id":243081,"date":"2026-08-23T02:57:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T07:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/x-ray-analysis-reveals-the-inner-life-of-leaves-while-advancing-engineering-efforts-to-reduce-crop-sweat"},"modified":"2026-08-23T02:57:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T07:57:32","slug":"x-ray-analysis-reveals-the-inner-life-of-leaves-while-advancing-engineering-efforts-to-reduce-crop-sweat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/x-ray-analysis-reveals-the-inner-life-of-leaves-while-advancing-engineering-efforts-to-reduce-crop-sweat","title":{"rendered":"X-ray analysis reveals the inner life of leaves while advancing engineering efforts to reduce \u2018crop sweat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Midwestern summer, humans and plants have to breathe through the heat and humidity. Researchers hope that a retooled crop plant\u2014one with an improved ventilation system within its leaves\u2014could thrive while avoiding drought stress by reducing \u201ccrop sweat.\u201d Thanks to next-generation imaging technology powered by Argonne National Laboratory\u2019s particle collider beamline, a team of scientists now has precise schematics of the leaf\u2019s interior and can refine approaches to breeding hardier crop plants.<\/p>\n

The research, published in Plant Physiology<\/i><\/a>, was led by postdoctoral researcher James Fischer in the laboratory of plant biology and crop sciences professor Andrew Leakey at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their work represents the first detailed look at how the pores on the leaf surfaces of sorghum, a highly productive and resilient grass crop, connect to the air pathways, photosynthetic centers and veins beneath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are connections between each component of the leaf\u2026 t\u2019s a highly organized system,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cWe are really defining the leaf beyond just carbon dioxide goes in, water comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Midwestern summer, humans and plants have to breathe through the heat and humidity. Researchers hope that a retooled crop plant\u2014one with an improved ventilation system within its leaves\u2014could thrive while avoiding drought stress by reducing \u201ccrop sweat.\u201d Thanks to next-generation imaging technology powered by Argonne National Laboratory\u2019s particle collider beamline, a team of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}