A screening process for the germination and growth of seed is generally required for plant research. Such a repetitive screening process is costly and time-consuming, and its bulky setup requires a lot of space. In particular, the control of the variables, such as light, nutrients, hormones and temperature, is difficult due to the limited space for incubation. In addition, small seeds such as Arabidopsis thaliana are difficult to handle as they are hundreds of microns in diameter and require a more precisely controllable screening environment. However, conventional screening methods involve the seeding of multiple seeds on a single agarose plate without physical partitions. Such methods need to be improved because they lack control over the growth environment and the results are highly dependent on the researchers. To overcome the above-mentioned limitations, a novel seeding array chip has been developed which can be filled with conventional solid agarose while enabling more efficient screening. Individual seeds can be partitioned from each other and a number of different agarose conditions can be tested in a single plant array chip. As a demonstration, we tested the effect of various concentrations of Murashige and Skoog medium and a plant hormone (e.g., abscisic acid) on the growth of Arabidopsis. The chip can efficiently save the space required for screening by providing different conditions for ∼400 seeds in a 59 × 55 mm chip, and it also provides easy observation and analysis of seed growth. The proposed plant array chip is expected to contribute to more efficient screening of essential phenotypes such as germination and growth for both academic and industrial purposes.

中文翻译：

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用于拟南芥发芽和生长筛选的植物阵列芯片

植物研究通常需要种子发芽和生长的筛选过程。这种重复的筛选过程是昂贵且费时的，并且其庞大的设置需要大量空间。尤其是，由于孵化空间有限，因此难以控制变量（例如光，营养素，激素和温度）。此外，小种子，如拟南芥直径为数百微米，并且需要更精确可控的筛选环境，因此难以操作。然而，常规的筛选方法涉及将多个种子播种在单个琼脂糖平板上而没有物理分隔。由于缺乏对生长环境的控制，并且结果高度依赖研究人员，因此需要改进这些方法。为了克服上述限制，已经开发了一种新型的种子阵列芯片，其可以填充有常规的固体琼脂糖，同时能够进行更有效的筛选。单个种子可以彼此分配，并且可以在单个植物阵列芯片中测试多种不同的琼脂糖条件。作为演示，我们测试了各种浓度的Murashige和Skoog培养基以及植物激素（例如脱落酸）对拟南芥生长的影响。该芯片可为59×55 mm芯片中的约400个种子提供不同的条件，从而有效地节省了筛选所需的空间，并且还易于观察和分析种子的生长。预期所提出的植物阵列芯片将有助于更有效地筛选基本表型，例如用于学术和工业目的的发芽和生长。