Visualization of Water Transport Pathways in Plants Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a well established non-invasive technique to retrieve structural information from plants and fruits. Water transport inside these materials has also been studied with MRI, however, the integrate combination of studying both structure and dynamics has hardly been considered. Here it is shown how the anisotropic nature of water diffusion in channels or vessels inside the plant, combined with plant structural information, can be used to map these vessels in three dimensions. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), an MR technique initially introduced to study white matter in mammalian brains, is used to track water transport pathways inside Thompson Seedless grapes and celery as an example.