Interaction of light with botanical specimens

In recent years, plant biotechnology has become an important sector, with the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries promoting research activities in plant sciences. This has placed increased demands on sophisticated optical microscopy to assist plant research. While most of the discussion of confocal and multiphoton fluorescence microscopy concentrates on the imaging of animal tissues and cells, very little attention has been paid to the imaging of botanical specimens. As a result, plant researchers frequently have to rely on the imaging technology developed primarily from animal work.