Evaluation of plastic scintillators for live imaging of 14C-labeled photosynthate movement in plants

We updated real-time radioisotope imaging system (RRIS) to study photosynthate movement in a large-size plant. Earlier, we used a CsI (Tl) scintillator attached to a fiber optic plate (FOS) to convert radiation into light. However, the scintillator size was fixed as 10 cm × 10 cm, which was too small to observe the entire plant. Moreover, the high cost of FOS makes it hard for other researchers to introduce the system in their facilities. Here, we investigated six types of low-priced plastic scintillators, and demonstrated the movement of 14C-labeled photosynthates in a living plant using the most efficient scintillator instead of FOS.