Abstract
The substances in apoplast have critical roles in plant growth and differentiation. A technique to obtain phloem contents by EDTA from cut leaves takes long time to collect apoplast fluid. We developed a method to obtain the apoplast fluid by pressurizing a plant in a pressure chamber. The contamination of apoplast fluid by symplast was examined using 7-10-day-old seedlings of Pharbitis nil. Symplast was collected by centrifugation from the used plant that had been frozen and thawed. The volume of apoplast was about 5% of symplast. The major sugar components of apoplast were Glc, Suc and Fru, in the ratio of 68, 25 and 7%, the ratio of symplast was 50, 20, and 30%. SDS-PAGE analysis showed that a band at 120 kDa was only for symplast and another at 20 kDa found only for apoplast, suggesting that the contamination of apoplast fluid by symplast was very little.
