WE’RE used to spectacular MRI scans of the human body, so why not scan plants? The trouble is that living plants are not just rooted, but also often too big or awkwardly shaped to fit into a conventional scanner.
Now Henk van As and his team at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have developed a portable MRI for studying living plants, from tobacco to maize. So far his team has found that drought-susceptible and drought-resistant plants store water and move it around in different ways.His team also aims to measure sap flow and long-distance water transport in trees.
Van As…
