A Synthetic Soil Habitat for Plant-on-a-Chip Studies

Microfluidics offer a new approach to studying whole organisms, like plants, under reduced-complexity conditions. However, by reducing the complexity of the organism's environment, it is possible to inadvertently alter the organism's phenotype, which biases laboratory results compared to in situ experiments. To re-introduce complexity from the rhizosphere, we have developed a plant microhabitat that mimics the physical structure of soils. Here we establish the amenability of the synthetic soil habitat for long-term culture of Brachypodium distachyon, a model grass, and describe the influence of the synthetic soil layout and gravitropism on the trajectory of root growth through the pore space.