Identification of location and speciation of CeO2 micro and nanoparticles in radish and lettuce.

After nuclear accident, non-soluble radioactive particles serve as an additional source for human exposure to radioactivity, when transferred to agricultural crops. The foliar transfer mechanisms of such source into plants are poorly assessed by risk assessment tools which includes retention, incorporation and translocation. The transfer is tuned as a function of plant and particles interaction. Thus, properties of particles like size and charge, and those of plants like stomatal size, leaf hairs and cuticle thickness will determine fluxes distributed on and within plant, that would be able to translocate later. Therefore, because of the lack of data regarding the transfer of non-soluble particle, CeO2 particle with relevant size range (10 nm- 50 nm and 460 nm) will be used as proxy to non-reactive particles for plants exposure. This approach will allow us to identify the location and speciation of particles using multi-X-ray techniques like μXRF and μXANES on the ID21 beamline.