Sugarcane exhibits all the major characteristics of a promising bioenergy crop including high biomass yield, C4 photosynthetic system, perennial nature, and ratooning ability. Being the largest agricultural commodity of the world with respect to total production, sugarcane biomass is abundantly available. Brazil has already become a sugarcane biofuels centered economy while Thailand, Colombia, and South Africa are also significantly exploiting this energy source. Other major cane producers include India, China, Pakistan, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, and the United States. It has been projected that sugarcane biofuels will be playing extremely important role in world's energy matrix in recent future. This book analyzes the significance, applications, achievements, and future avenues of biofuels and bioenergy production from sugarcane, in top cane growing countries around the globe. Moreover, we also evaluate the barriers and areas of improvement for targeting efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective biofuels from sugarcane to meet the world's energy needs and combat the climate change.

The book is designed to provide a review on the methods and current status of conservation of the tropical plant species. It will also provide the information on the richness of the tropical plant diversity, the need to conserve, and the potential utilization of the genetic resources. Future perspectives of conservation of tropical species will be discussed. Besides being useful to researchers and graduate students in the field, we hope to create a reference for a much wider audience who are interested in conservation of tropical plant diversity.

The book discusses the complex interactions between plants and their associated microbial communities. It also elucidates the ways in which these microbiomes are connected with the plant system, and how they affect plant health. The different chapters describe how microbiomes affect plants with regard to immunity, disease conditions, stress management and productivity. In addition, the book describes how an 'additional plant genome' functions as a whole organ system of the host, and how it presents both challenges and opportunities for the plant system. Moreover, the book includes a dedicated section on using omics tools to understand these interactions, and on exploiting them to their full potential.

Natural Remedies for Pest, Disease and Weed Control presents alternative solutions in the form of eco-friendly, natural remedies. Written by senior researchers and professionals with many years of experience from diverse fields in biopesticides, the book presents scientific information on novel plant families with pesticidal properties and their formulations. It also covers chapters on microbial pest control and control of weeds by allelopathic compounds. This book will be invaluable to plant pathologists, agrochemists, plant biochemists, botanists, environmental chemists and farmers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.

A great deal of interest has been generated recently in the isolation, characterization, and biological activity of phytochemicals. Phytochemicals have the potential to enhance pharmaceuticals and drug discovery. As such, there is an urgent need for current research in the global scope of phytochemicals including the chemical and physical characteristics, analytical procedures, biological activity, safety, and industrial applications. The Handbook of Research on Advanced Phytochemicals and Plant-Based Drug Discovery examines the applications of bioactive molecules from a health perspective, examining the pharmacological aspects of medicinal plants, the phytochemical and biological activities of different natural products, and ethnobotany and medicinal properties. Moreover, it presents a novel dietary approach for human disease management. Covering topics such as computer-aided drug design, government regulation, and medicinal plant taxonomy, this major reference work is beneficial to pharmacists, medical practitioners, phytologists, hospital administrators, government officials, faculty and students of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This volume continues the retrospective analyses of Volumes I and II, but goes beyond that in an attempt to understand how phenolic acids are partitioned in seedling-solution and seedling-microbe-soil-sand culture systems and how phenolic acid effects on seedlings may be related to the actual and/or conditional physicochemical properties (e.g., solubility, hydrophobicity, pKa, molecular structure and soil sorption/desorption) of simple phenolic acids. Specifically, it explores the quantitative partitioning (i.e., source-sink relationships) of benzoic and cinnamic acids in cucumber seedling-solution and cucumber seedling-microbe-soil-sand systems and how that partitioning may influence phenolic acid effects on cucumber seedlings. Regressions, correlations and conceptual and hypothetical models are used to achieve these objectives. Cucumber seedlings are used as a surrogate for phenolic acid sensitive herbaceous dicotyledonous weed seedlings. This volume was written specifically for researchers and their students interested in understanding how a range of simple phenolic acids and potentially other putative allelopathic compounds released from living plants and their litter and residues may modify soil chemistry, soil and rhizosphere microbial biology, seedling physiology and seedling growth. In addition, this volume describes the potential relationships, where they may exist, for direct transfer of organic compounds between plants, plant communication and plant-plant allelopathic interactions and addresses the following questions: Can physicochemical properties of phenolic acids be used as tools to help understand the complex behavior of phenolic acids and the ultimate effects of phenolic acids on sensitive seedlings? What insights do laboratory bioassays and the conceptual and hypothetical models of laboratory systems provide us concerning the potential behavior and effects of phenolic acids in field systems? What potential role may phenolic acids play in broadleaf-weed seedling emergence in wheat debris cover crop no-till systems?