David Henry

This dataset contains detailed analysis of crop foliar fertilisers that will provide new knowledge for the creation of improved application technologies and formulations to improve the efficiency of plant uptake and utilisation of foliar applied nutrients. This is the output of the GRDC-funded project: Synchrotron Postdoctoral Fellow no. 4: Plants - Novel foliar fertilisers and nutrition trait diversity of grains (UMU2001_001RTX). The study involves determining the background levels of zinc in a collection of wheat grains var. Scepter from the NVT sites across Australian agricultural regions; elemental analysis of wheat grains treated with zinc-foliar fertilizers and elemental mapping analysis using the X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) beamline at the Australian Synchrotron (AS) facilities of treated grains. Wheat grain samples from NVT sites across Australia for over 5 years were collected and analysed for zinc concentrations. Novel foliar fertilizers containing silica mesoporous nanoparticles and lipid chelators namely ionophores were produced and compared against conventional forms of Zn sich ZnSO4 on wheat plants under controlled conditions. Grains from treated wheat plants were harvested and studied at the XFM beamline at the AS facilities. Data collected at the XFM beamline were collected and stored at the AS premises. Data analysis by remote access from Murdoch University to the AS's raw data is ongoing. GEOPIXE is the software installed at AS that is used remotely to conduct data analysis by generating elemental maps of wheat grains collected at the XFM. SigmaPlot software is used for statistical analysis. Methods of metadata analysis, production of foliar formulations, and data analysis using the GEOPIXE software are in preparation for publication.