High resolution transmission electron microscopy is commonly considered as the standard application for discrete tomography. While this has yet to be technically realized, new applications with a similar flavor have emerged in materials science. In our group at Ris� DTU (Denmark's National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy), for instance, we study polycrystalline materials via synchrotron X-ray diffraction. Several reconstruction problems arise, most of them exhibit inherently discrete aspects. In this talk I want to give a concise mathematical introduction to some of these reconstruction problems. Special focus is on their relationship to classical discrete tomography. Several open mathematical questions will be mentioned along the way.