Predicting Phloem Transport Rate in Crops.

Accessing phloem sap movement properties, such as transport rate and front velocity, is difficult and involves technologies that are not routinely implementable at high throughput. This can be problematic if quantitative information on phloem transport is to be used for comparing varieties for breeding. We present here how to calculate an average phloem transport rate from agronomic data, using two crops, wheat and oil palm, as examples. When physiological variables are also known for the same agronomic trial, phloem transport rate can be related to other processes such as water movement in xylem sap or nutrient utilization.