Project of a young biologist of AltSU received funding from the fund of the President of the Russian Federation

Marina Solomonova, a young scientist from Altai State University, Candidate of Biological Sciences, an assistant professor of Department of Botany, received support of the fund of the President of the Russian Federation. The Grants Council approved the extension for 2023 for the implementation of her project "Variability of the characteristics of phytoliths of short cells of the epidermis of Dactylis glomerata L. in the conditions of the south of Western Siberia."

Phytoliths are specific structures that form inside plant cells. While the plant lives, it actively accumulates silicon, and in this process the cell is completely filled with silicon compounds. In fact, a fossilized copy of a cell is obtained, which is highly stable in the external environment and can be stored for a very long time,” says Marina Solomonova.

The method of studying these cell particles is called "phytolith analysis." It finds wide application, for example, in archeology; with its help, scientists carry out paleoecological and paleobotanical reconstructions. Phytolithic analysis makes it possible to identify not only the natural environment in which a person lived, but also cultivated cereals. In particular, phytolith morphometry is used to identify cultivated cereals. Measuring these particles allows scientists to understand what kind of cereal is in front of them: wheat, oats, barley, etc.

“In order to apply these methods, you need to understand how variable these indicators are. As part of the project, we take a wild plant (wild grass), isolate these particles - phytoliths - and see how they change in different environmental conditions. This will allow us to understand in further research the veracity of the results we obtained on the identification of cultivated cereals in some archaeological deposits are,” said Maria Solomonova.

The project also has a perspective in the development of a bioindicative method for determining the quality of the environment. Scientists take plant samples and look at the conditions in which they grew. How polluted is the natural environment, what heavy metals were contained in the soil, whether it was poor or rich in nutrients. And then they study the phytoliths of these plants and see how they reflect environmental conditions.

At present, within the framework of the project, AltSU scientists have taken samples of the Hedgehog plant (Dactylis glomerata L.) from 10 populations, from which herbarium material has been taken. The ecological conditions in these ten populations have been studied, a part of the herbarium material has been processed, and this work is ongoing. Undergraduates Tatyana Zhembrovskaya and Alena Lyashchenko (Department of Botany) take part in the project.