Laser wakefield driven X-ray sources in Canada: a brilliant future for agriculture and global food security

We describe our system for generating intense beams of hard X-rays optimized for high throughput phase contrast plant imaging and rapid identification of phenotype in a plant production setting. High peak and average power X-ray beams are generated in a novel regime of ultra-relativistic self-guiding. X-ray beams at 40keV with 4 mu J per pulse (30keV - 40keV band) and an average power of 10 mu W (30keV - 40keV band) are currently produced and used to demonstrate the potential of the LWFA based X-ray sources.