The laser-induced fluorescence transient (LIFT) method is a non-invasive remote sensing technique for measurement of photosynthetic performance of plants under laboratory and field conditions. We report here a long-term comparative study to monitor the performance of different cultivars of barley and sugar beet during the growth season of these crops. The LIFT measurements provided useful results about photosynthetic light use efficiency on selected leaves in the canopy of the studied crops. The different canopy architectures, with different optical properties, influenced the LIFT measurements.
