Abstract
Trachycarpus fortunei is probably one of the most cold-hardy palm species. Their leaves tolerate -14C without any injury and show similar levels of cold hardiness throughout the year. Even in mid-summer, they survived -10C or lower without any injury when cooled 2C/h. DTA and NMR micro-imaging revealed that most living cells in Trachycarpus leaves employ deep supercooling (-16 to -22C) as the mechanism of cold hardiness, which allows Trachycarpus leaves to be a good system to study the mechanism of deep supercooling. To elucidate the mechanisms, we investigated the property of extracts from the leaves. The extract works as an anti-ice nucleating agent. The extract can inhibit the ice nucleation activity of ice nucleating bacteria, phenazine and AgI. The extract was further fractionated into Ethyl acetate, water and BuOH fractions. We characterized the activity of these fractions and also attempted to quantify the anti-nucleating activity.
