“…Autofluorescence (Heath & Stumpf, 1986;Parry & Carver, 1986) indicates the presence of phenolic compounds which may be either different from lignins (Aist & Israel, 1986;Smart et al, 1986 a) or similar to lignins (Sherwood & Vance, 1976;Ride & Pearce, 1979;Edwards & Ayres, 1981). They also may contain silicon (Kunoh & Ishizaki, 1976;Zeyen, Carver & Ahlstrand, 1983;Stumpf & Heath, 1985;Ebrahim-Nesbat, Heitefuss & Rohringer, 1986, polysaccharides (Aist, 1976;Ebrahim-Nesbat et al, 1986), cutin, chitin, suberin, gums and pectin (Aist, 1976) and proteins, in particular peroxidases (Edwards, 1970;Delon, 1974;Ebrahim-Nesbat et al, 1986;Esquerre-Tugaye et al, 1987).…”