Effect of long-term ozone exposure on the surface structure of plant epicuticular wax and its subsequent ability to sequester exogenous volatile organic compounds (VOCs)

Recent work has demonstrated the importance of epicuticular wax in ‘associational resistance’ in plants, through sequestration of putative defence VOCs from neighbour plants. Furthermore, both neutron reflectometry and X-ray diffraction have been used previously to examine and characterise the properties of cuticular wax proxies. Alterations to epicuticular sequestering under pollutants such as ozone have yet to be explored, yet they have potentially far-reaching implications for plant health. We propose a neutron reflectometry (NR) experiment on spin-coated films of extracted and reconstituted black poplar (Populus nigra subsp. betulifolia) epicuticular wax with the aims of i) observing differences in the surface structure of leaf wax between trees grown under ambient or enriched ozone, and ii) observing and characterising differences in the sequestering capacity of the surfaces after exposure to putative plant defence VOCs.