Dear Colleagues,

In the context of the move toward more sustainable development and the increasing world population, there is a need to increase agricultural productivity and to reduce the ecological footprint of plant production and transformation. This requires improvement in several areas, including breeding and plant protection, as well as optimization of storage conditions and transformation processes of fruit and vegetables. By being able to access quantitative information about water and metabolites in a non-invasive way, TD-NMR and MRI represent an attractive approach for the characterization of plant tissues, plant organs and living plants.  These techniques allow to address diverse and complex issues concerning plant physiology as well as quality and processing of fruits and vegetables.

NMR relaxometry and diffusometry are particularly sensitive to water status, to the subcellular compartmentation of water and to membrane permeability/integrity. The potential of one- and two-dimensional relaxation and diffusion experiments for exploring the changes in structure and water transfer at the subcellular and cellular scales has been demonstrated in numerous studies. In the case of MRI, image contrast can be selected to provide anatomical information of an intact plant organ or to map spatial distribution of relaxation and diffusion parameters. Both TD-NMR and MRI have been shown efficient for quantifying water transport in the xylem and the phloem of living plants. In addition, MRI images can be used to access information of the amount and distribution of metabolites (e.g. lipids, sugars, starch) and gas-filled spaces in plant tissues. Different TD-NMR and MRI approaches allow therefore access to information about structure, composition and hydraulic processes in plants at multiple length scales, contributing in generation of new knowledge about plant functioning. These approaches also provide new opportunities for fine phenotyping. 

Although a large number of applications of TD-NMR and MRI in plant science have been reported, there are still open questions and many possibilities for further developments that often require combining competences in NMR and MRI physics and plant biology. The interpretation of relaxation and diffusion data in terms of structure and water transport has still to be improved and to be validated in the case of various physiological changes experienced by living plants or more rapid physical processes such as drying or freezing of plant tissues. There is also a need for improvement in the acquisition and processing of quantitative NMR and MRI data. Finally, further approaches which are currently being developed are needed for extending plant characterization and phenotyping from laboratory experiments to plants in their natural environment. Therefore, this Special Issue is focused on the recent fundamental and technical advances as well as practical applications of TD-NMR ad MRI methods to plants research, aiming to contribute to the increase of the use of these approaches within the plant biology. Original research articles, reviews and technical notes are most welcome.

Dr. Maja Musse
Guest Editor

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• NMR relaxometry
• NMR diffusometry
• quantitative MRI
• metabolite imaging
• lipid quantification
• NMR relaxation
• fruits
• vegetables
• food
• seeds
• cell compartments