Phloem tissues are exquisitely difficult to probe experimentally. The biomimetic approach based on synthetic phloem devices might prove useful by allowing to uncover the dynamics and physicochemical couplings of the phloem. In this chapter we discuss the design of a synthetic microfluidic device simulating phloem transport, and the importance of such a device in testing various hypotheses of phloem physiology.
Keywords: Biomimetics; Microfluidics; Osmosis; Phloem; Sucrose transport; Sugars.