Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2014, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (2): 173-182.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1259.2014.00173

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Quantification of Leaf Anatomical Structure and Its Application in a C4 Plant, Sorghum

Yue Gong1,2, Haimiao Chen3, Chuangdao Jiang1*, Lei Shi1   

  1. 1Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China

    2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

    3School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • Received:2013-03-01 Revised:2013-05-31 Online:2014-03-01 Published:2014-01-07
  • Contact: Chuangdao Jiang

Abstract: Measurement of the total leaf length, thickness of the anatomical characters in thin sections and the correction factor F is one of the important quantitative methods in examining leaf structure. However, little attention has been paid to the effects of cell size and thickness of thin sections on accuracy of the method, which can result in errors because of few numbers of thin sections. To solve this problem, we examined the causes of the error produced by this method and defined the relationship between accuracy and number of thin sections in this study. In addition, we defined the contact area bet- ween bundle sheath cells and mesophyll cells to estimate the leaf anatomy of sorghum, a C4 species.