Inorganic nutrient distribution imaging in a single rice grain using micro-XRF

Rice mainly consists of starch, but it also contains inorganic nutrients, and it has been reported that different inorganic elements have different distributions in a rice grain. We carried out elemental distribution imaging of inorganic nutrients with the HORIBA XGT-9000 X-ray analytical microscope. The result successfully visualized that P and K were accumulated in specific areas of a rice grain, while S and Zn were uniformly distributed within a rice grain.