Crops worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to pandemics, as diseases hitch rides on global flows of people and goods, hopping from continent to continent. Phloem diseases such as citrus greening are one particularly devastating group of plant diseases that have been wreaking economic havoc globally. However, these diseases can be difficult to study, as phloem cells are relatively inaccessible and difficult to isolate. In work presented in a recent issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, Dr. Ed Etxeberria and colleagues at the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center present a new technique for identifying phloem cells in plant tissue.