Protocols

Written procedures behind the measurements reported in the publications on this site. They are the versions actually run in the laboratory and in the field, including the steps that are easy to get wrong.

Physiology And Phenotyping

• Gas exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence measurement, including instrument warm-up, light and CO₂ settings, and the time of day a reading is comparable.
• Plant water status: predawn and midday leaf water potential, stomatal conductance, and the sampling order that keeps a diurnal series interpretable.
• Canopy and thermal phenotyping, including UAV flight planning, ground reference panels, and temperature normalisation.
• Phenology scoring and agronomic trait measurement at harvest.

Metabolomics And Ionomics

• Sample collection, quenching, and storage, where most of the variance in a metabolomics dataset is decided.
• GC-MS, LC-MS and HS-SPME-GC-MS sample preparation and run sequences, including blanks, quality-control injections, and internal standards.
• ICP-OES digestion and element quantification.
• Metabolite annotation, spectral curation, and the reporting standard used for identification confidence.

Root And Shoot Trait Analysis

• Root system architecture sampling and imaging.
• Ion partitioning between root, stem and leaf.
• Rootstock and scion trait measurement in grafted material.

Field Trial Management

• Trial layout, randomisation, and plot labelling.
• Irrigation and salinity treatment application and monitoring.
• Data capture sheets and the checks run before a season’s data is analysed.

Protocol documents will be linked under each heading as they are prepared for release. If you need one that is not yet posted, get in touch.