Now you can see floral scents!​

Have you ever thought about when flowers emit their scents?

KAIST mechanical engineers and biological scientists directly visualized how often a lily releases a floral scent using a laser interferometry method. These measurement results can provide new insights for understanding and further exploring the biosynthesis and emission mechanisms of floral volatiles.

Why is it important to know this? It is well known that the fragrance of flowers affects their interactions with pollinators, microorganisms, and florivores. For instance, many flowering plants can tune their scent emission rates when pollinators are active for pollination. Petunias and the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata emit floral scents at night to attract night-active pollinators. Thus, visualizing scent emissions can help us understand the ecological evolution of plant-pollinator interactions.

Many groups have been trying to develop methods for scent analysis. Mass spectrometry has been one widely used method for investigating the fragrance of flowers. Although mass spectrometry reveals the quality and quantity of floral scents, it is impossible to directly measure the releasing frequency. A laser-based gas detection system and a smartphone-based detection system using chemo-responsive dyes have also been used to measure volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in real-time, but it is still hard to measure the time-dependent emission rate of floral scents.

However, the KAIST research team co-led by Professor Hyoungsoo Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Professor Sang-Gyu Kim from the Department of Biological Sciences measured a refractive index difference between the vapor of the VOCs of lilies and the air to measure the emission frequency. The floral scent vapor was detected and the refractive index of air was 1.0 while that of the major floral scent of a linalool lily was 1.46.

Professor Hyoungsoo Kim said, “We expect this technology to be further applicable to various industrial sectors such as developing it to detect hazardous substances in a space.”  The research team also plans to identify the DNA mechanism that controls floral scent secretion.

The current work entitled “Real-time visualization of scent accumulation reveals the frequency of floral scent emissions” was published in Frontiers in Plant Science on April 18, 2022. (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.835305).

This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021R1A2C2007835), the Rural Development Administration (PJ016403), and the KAIST-funded Global Singularity Research PREP-Program.

-About KAIST

KAIST is the first and top science and technology university in Korea. KAIST was established in 1971 by the Korean government to educate scientists and engineers committed to industrialization and economic growth in Korea.

Since then, KAIST and its 67,000 graduates have been the gateway to advanced science and technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. KAIST has emerged as one of the most innovative universities with more than 10,000 students enrolled in five colleges and seven schools including 1,039 international students from 90 countries.

On the precipice of its semi-centennial anniversary in 2021, KAIST continues to strive to make the world better through its pursuits in education, research, entrepreneurship, and globalization.

For more information about KAIST, please visit http://www.kaist.ac.kr/en/.