Imaging Tools for the Plant Sciences

Dear Colleagues,

Many branches of the plant sciences require us to see our favourite organism, organ, tissue, cells and subcellular compartments in different ways. This inevitably requires development of novel imaging approaches or refinements of existing techniques, with improved ways of interpreting the data. Porting existing techniques directly from the animal and biomedical fields is not always a solution, given the extra challenges we face for our samples, such as autofluorescence, a desire for gravity and diffractive thick cell walls. We are increasingly utilising a wider range of techniques, sometimes in tandem on the same sample (correlative microscopy), giving rise to ever more complex and large datasets and sometimes requiring heavy computational approaches.

This Special Issue will focus on new approaches to imaging, covering a wide range of macro-, micro- and nano-related techniques applied specifically to the study of plants. Examples include (but are not limited to) fluorescence microscopy (widefield, confocal, lifetime, super-res, light sheet), light, chemical (IR/Raman/EDX mapping and chemical probes), electron (cryo, fixed, block face imaging), X-ray, mechanobiology (AFM, Brillouin, mechanical probes), sample preparation (including microfluidics) and various methods of dealing with the data (3D visualisation, segmentation, big data, correlative data).

For research articles or short communications, submissions should either be a description of a new technique with a proof-of-concept plant-related application or significant development of an existing technique that demonstrates a greater understanding of plant biology. Expertise in any area of imaging and microscopy can vary widely and a detailed methodology should not just cater to experts but be supplied in a way that can be followed and applied by an advanced beginner or proficient user, using supplementary material for further in-depth descriptions and diagrams. Full raw datasets and software tools need to be made available through a suitable repository and cited within the article.

Dr. Raymond Wightman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.