Abstract
Because it is difficult to obtain transverse views of the plant phloem sieve plate pores, which are short tubes, to estimate their number and diameters, a method based on longitudinal views is proposed. This method uses recent methods to estimate the number and the sizes of approximately circular objects from their images, given by slices perpendicular to the objects. Moreover, because such longitudinal views are obtained from slices that are rather close to the plate centres whereas the pore size may vary with the pore distance from the plate edge, a sieve plate reconstruction model was developed and incorporated in the method to consider this bias. The method was successfully tested with published longitudinal views of phloem of Soybean and an exceptional entire transverse view from the same tissue. The method was also validated with simulated slices in two sieve plates from Cucurbita and Phaseolus. This method will likely be useful to estimate and to model the hydraulic conductivity and the architecture of the plant phloem, and it could have applications for other materials with approximately cylindrical structures.
Highlights
Estimating the number and size of phloem sieve plate pores using longitudinal views and geometric reconstruction
Because it is difficult to obtain transverse views of the plant phloem sieve plate pores, which are short tubes, to estimate their number and diameters, a method based on longitudinal views is proposed
The pores of the sieve plates (Figs. 1, 2a and 3a) in the sieve tubes of plant phloem are shaped as short tubes
Summary
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR 1115, Unitede recherche sur les Plantes et Systemes de culture Horticoles, 84914 Avignon Cedex 9, France. Because it is difficult to obtain transverse views of the plant phloem sieve plate pores, which are short tubes, to estimate their number and diameters, a method based on longitudinal views is proposed. This method uses recent methods to estimate the number and the sizes of approximately circular objects from their images, given by slices perpendicular to the objects. Longitudinal views of phloem (Fig. 1) are generally obtained from a tissue slice that does not pass exactly at the levels of the axes of the tube, plate and pores They are near the tube and plate axes because it is easier to identify a cell such as a sieve tube if the pores are visible. The method was successfully tested with images that were obtained from simulated slices in two sieve plates with their pores from two other species (Cucurbita maxima and Phaseolus vulgaris), which were published by Mullendore et al.[5]
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