The hidden face of the plant cuticle

The hidden face of the plant cuticle

Cuticle, on the surface of all plants, is a natural hydrophobic composite that protects plants from environmental risks. Understanding the architecture of plant cuticles is a prerequisite for controlling their functionality for sustainable crop production and transformation.

Chemically complex the cuticle includes lipids, polysaccharides and phenolic compounds. Using the tomato as a model from the beginning of the expansion phase until maturity, an experimental scheme was designed to allow the imaging and coupling of chemical composition information (biochemistry, RAMAN imaging combined with multivariate data analyzes) with nanoscale mechanical property measurements (atomic force microscopy).