CD BioSciences is committed to providing our customers with an analysis of plant stem bending stresses to provide useful information for crop cultivation and breeding. Our professional technical support will make a significant contribution to the success of your project in organ and tissue mechanics research.

Background

Plant stems usually fail due to bending loads. When failure occurs, it usually manifests itself in one of four modes: buckling or kinking, splitting of fibres along the longitudinal direction, the collapse of the compressive tissue or tensile fracture of the stem tissue. Tensile, compressive and shear stresses within the stem are responsible for the latter two modes of failure. In order to optimize the processing of stem crops, an in-depth understanding of the deformation behavior of the crop and the interaction between the crop and the machine is essential.

Analytical expressions for bending stresses can be used to predict mechanical stresses and damage in plant stems. To date, equations from engineering beam theory have often been used to predict mechanical stresses in plant stems due to external loads. Beam theory has been applied to the study of thickness morphogenesis in tomato stems, trunk mechanics, bending strength of crops, and plant growth mechanisms.

Fig.1 An infinitesimally small cube with unit thickness taken within the plant stem under threepoint bending used to quantify the stresses at a point P. (Stubbs, 2018)

Our Services

To help our customers gain insight into the deformation behavior of stem crops, we offer a stem strength determination service as well as a modeling service for plant bending stresses. Our services include but are not limited to:

• We provide a service to determine the bending resistance and mechanical properties of plant stems using plant stem strength testers. We measure the stems in vivo at various stages of crop growth and statistically process the population measurements based on the correlation between bending resistance of the stem fibre layer and resistance to overturning.
• We offer a mechanical analysis service of plant stem bending behavior through modeling techniques. We help our customers to develop suitable mechanical models to describe the bending behavior of crop stalks, providing useful information for studying the influence of crop species, growth conditions, stem diameter and wall thickness on the bending process.

Applications

• Optimization of stem crops processing
• Agronomic breeding studies
• Ecological and evolutionary plant biomechanics studies

Our Advantages

• Experienced experimental technicians
• Fast delivery cycle of data results
• Strict experimental control system
• One-stop technical services

As a provider of biophysical analysis services, CD BioSciences has extensive experience and advanced technology platforms. We are committed to helping our customers obtain reliable stem bending strength measurements and establishing reliable models of bending stress in plant stems. If you are interested in our services, please feel free to contact us directly for more details.

Reference

1. Stubbs, C. J.; et al. Bending stress in plant stems: models and assumptions. Springer. 2018: 49-77.

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