Invitrogen™ Image-iT™ Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent

These reagents are compatible with both fluorescence-based and colorimetric-based applications. Image-iT Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent is an effective replacement for chloral hydrate, traditionally used to clear plant tissues in botanical microscopy.

Features of Image-iT Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent include:
• Clears plant tissue for whole-specimen imaging
• Soft-set mountant for imaging with refractive index of 1.45
• Effective replacement for chloral hydrate

Plant tissues often have structures with different refractive indexes, causing light scattering and spherical aberration, resulting in opaqueness. Image-iT Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent, with a high refractive index of 1.45, allows light to pass through the plant tissues with minimal light scattering, resulting in optical clarity and the ability to image deeper within the tissue.

Traditionally, researchers used chloral hydrate to clear plant specimens, but under current regulations it is a Federally Regulated Schedule IV substance (1), making it harder to acquire and use. Image-iT Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent is an effective replacement for chloral hydrate in almost all applications and tissue types where optical clearing is required.

Image-iT Plant Tissue Clearing Reagent and Image-iT Plant Tissue Hard-Set Mountant are based on Visikol™ for Plant Biology™ and Visikol™ Mount. Visikol for Plant Biology has been used in various fluorescent and colorimetric studies with plants (2,3,4) and has proved an effective substitute for chloral hydrate (1,5).

References:
1. Villani TS, Koroch AR, Simon JE. An improved clearing and mounting solution to replace chloral hydrate in microscopic applications. Appl Plant Sci. 2013 1(5).
2. Aoki Y, Van Trung N, Suzuki S. Impact of Piper betel leaf extract on grape downy mildew: effects of combining 4-allylpyrocatechol with eugenol, α-pinene or β-pinene. Plant Protect Sci. 2018 55: 23-30.
3. Lee KJI, Calder GM, Hindle CR, Newman JL, Robinson SN, Avondo JJHY, Coen ES. Macro optical projection tomography for large scale 3D imaging of plant structures and gene activity. J Exp Bot. 2017 68(3):527-538.
4. Vergara-Díaz O, Chairi F, Vicente R, Fernandez-Gallego JA, Nieto-Taladriz MT, Aparicio N, Kefauver SC, Araus JL. Leaf dorsoventrality as a paramount factor determining spectral performance in field-grown wheat under contrasting water regimes. J Exp Bot. 2018 69(12):3081-3094.
5. Urban MA, Barclay RS, Sivaguru M, Punyasena SW. Cuticle and subsurface ornamentation of intact plant leaf epidermis under confocal and superresolution microscopy. Microsc Res Tech. 2018 81(2):129-140.