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From plant oxidative stress to food safety: a versatile fluorescent probe for H 2 O 2 imaging in plant roots, living cells, and residual detection in milk.

Fu YL, Liu XY, Chen HH, Hu YW, Chang XW.

RSC advances · 21 Jul 2026 · 10.1039/d6ra05180d

Abstract

Hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) is an important signaling molecule in plants under stress, and its level can be stimulated by abiotic stress and oxidative stress, which will seriously affect plant growth and development. Additionally, the presence of excessive residual H 2 O 2 in food can pose significant health risks to humans, because intake of H 2 O 2 can lead to serious pathological conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a simple and efficient method to detect H 2 O 2 in both plants and food. In this paper, we designed a fluorescence probe NBP, which has the advantages of high selectivity, low detection limit (80 nM) and long emission wavelength (648 nm). The imaging effect of exogenous H 2 O 2 was realized in the roots of Platycodon grandiflorum . By exploring the interplay between H 2 O 2 , plant metals, and drought stress, we can observe the up-regulation of H 2 O 2 in the roots of Platycodon grandiflorum under adverse conditions, and the root 3D imaging study could be realized. Then we combined the fluorescence probe with a smartphone, which enables on-site detection of residual H 2 O 2 in various milk samples. In addition, we investigated the fluorescence imaging of endogenous and exogenous H 2 O 2 in living cells using NBP. Therefore, this study provides a new way to assess the oxidative stress risk of Platycodon grandiflorum roots under abiotic stress, which is expected to improve plant production and has broad application prospects in food sample detection.

Code and data availability

The article reports a fluorescent probe (NBP) for H2O2 imaging in Platycodon grandiflorum roots, cells, and milk. No public phenotype/trait dataset, plant image collection, author analysis code, or trained model is deposited; the data availability statement only points to the article and its supplementary PDF (spectra,

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