Flavonoid-specific staining of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Crop yields may be threatened by increases in UV-B radiation resulting from depletion of the ozone layer. In higher plants, the presence of flavonols provides a protective mechanism, and we report a novel staining procedure for the visualization of such protectants in plant tissue. It is shown that the proposed technique provides sensitive and specific fluorescence of flavonoids in chlorophyll-bleached tissue of Arabidopsis thaliana.