What is Rhodamine B used for?

Rhodamine B is an organic chloride salt and a xanthene dye that is widely used as a fluorochrome, a histological dye, and a fluorescent probe in several biotechnology applications including ELISA, fluorescence microscopy, and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and flow cytometry.

Because it is soluble in water and highly fluorescent, it is often used as a tracer dye in surface, ground and waste water to trace pollutants, study aeration and dispersion, measure time of travel, and understand the movement of water. Rhodamine B is often mixed with herbicides in order to indicate where they have been used.

Researchers are assessing its use as a biomarker in oral rabies vaccines for wildlife to identify animals that have ingested a vaccine bait.