XVI International Botanical Congess

NMR imaging used in conjunction with compounds labelled with the stable isotope 13C allows the implementation of experiments similar to those employing conventional 14C radioactive labelling, but with the additional advantage of non-invasive, chemically selective and spatially resolved detection. This technique is particularly usefull if it is applied to the investigastion of phloem transport in plants. Using this technique we measured phloem transport und phloem unloading of sucrose in castor bean seedlings as well as the apparent in vivo diffusion constant of the sucrose molecule in the plant parenchyma.