Soil - Plant - Atmosphere continuum studies by MRI

Understanding the way in which plants develop, grow, and interact with their environment requires tools capable of a high degree of both spatial and temporal resolution. Here we present an overview of noninvasive intact plant MRI, which is not a straight forward extension of the methods discussed for (bio)medical MRI. The combination of dedicated intact plant MRI hardware, methods of MRI flowmetry, and the interpretation of relaxation times and diffusion measurements in terms of water dynamics at the cell level provides an excellent and unique tool to study (the dynamics in) xylem and phloem water transport in relation to plant water balance, radial transport, root water uptake, and leaf evaporation/photosynthesis. Finally, a short overview of recently developed mobile NMR/MRI for in situ (greenhouses, field situation) applications is given.