Micropropagation of plants is a multibillion dollar industry being prac- ticed in hundreds of small and large nurseries and commercial labora- tories throughout the world. At present, it is the only component of plant biotechnology which has been commercially exploited on such a large scale, especially for the production of ornamentals. Now micro- propagation of trees and medicinal plants has also assumed great im- portance. With recent progress made in the propagation of fruit and forest trees, and the immediate need for afforestation and planting of orchards, propagules and plantlets are required quickly and in large numbers. Taking these points into consideration High-Tech and Micro- propagation I, If, If I, and IV were published in 1991 and 1992. The present two volumes, High-Tech and Micropropagation V and VI, com- prise 51 chapters contributed by international experts from 24 countries. High-Tech and M icropropagation V comprises 24 chapters arranged into the following three sections: I. Vegetables and fruits (garlic, Amaranthus, Brassica oleracea, pepper watermelon, cassava, banana, Myrtus communis, passionfruit, Poly- mnia sonchifolia, pepino, and spinach) II. Grasses (bamboos, Caustis dioica, Dendrocalamus, Miscanthus x giganteus, sugarcane) III. Trees (Aegle marmelos, Eucalyptus, Fraxinus excelsior, Juglans cinerea, Pinus virginiana, Prosopis, and Ulmus species) High-Tech and Micropropagation VI comprises 27 chapters arranged in two sections: I.

One of the central research themes in ecology is evaluating the extent to which biological richness is necessary to sustain the Earth's system and the functioning of individual ecosystems. In this volume, for the first time, the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes in forests is thoroughly explored. The text examines the multiple effects of tree diversity on productivity and growth, biogeochemical cycles, animals, pests, and disturbances. Further, the importance of diversity at different scales, ranging from stand management to global issues, is considered. The authors provide both extensive reviews of the existing literature and own datasets. The volume is ideally suited for researchers and practitioners involved in ecosystem management and the sustainable use of forest resources.

Trees and vegetation in cities aren t just there to make the place look pretty. They have an important ecological function. This book contains studies and perspectives on urban forests from a broad array of basic and applied scientific disciplines including ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry, landscape ecology, plant community ecology, geography, and social science. The book includes contributions from experts around the world, allowing the reader to evaluate methods and management that are appropriate for particular geographic, environmental, and socio-political contexts.

This book has been developed as a textbook of decision support methods for s- dents and can also serve as a handbook for practical foresters. It is based on the research we have carried out and lectures we have given over the past years. We have set out to present all the methods in enough details and examples that they can be adopted from this book. For researchers who need more details, references are given to more advanced scienti c papers and books. In this book, theories of decision making and the methods used for forestry - cision support are presented. The book covers basics of classical utility theory and its fuzzy counterparts, exact and heuristic optimization method and modern mul- criteria decision support tools such as AHP or ELECTRE. Possibilities of analyzing and dealing with uncertainty are also brie y presented. The use of each method is illustrated with examples. In addition to decision aid methods, we present the basic theory of participatory planning. Both hard and soft methods suitable for partici- tory or group decision analysis are presented, such as problem structuring method and voting. The criticism towards decision theory is also covered. Finally, some real-life examples of the methods are presented. Annika Kangas Department of Forest Resource Management University of Helsinki Jyrki Kangas Metsahallitus ] Mikko Kurttila University of Joensuu v Acknowledgements Manyresearchersandstudentshavehelpedusbyreviewingchapters, suggesting- provements and even checking our example calculations. We would like to ackno- edgethesereviewers, Ms.AnuHankala, M.Sc.TeppoHujala, M.Sc.AnnuKaila,

The Handbook of Plant Ecophysiology Techniques you have now in your hands is the result of several combined events and efforts. The birth of this handbook can be traced as far as 1997, when our Plant Ecophysiology lab at the University of Vigo hosted a practical course on Plant Ecophysiology Techniques. That course showed us how much useful a handbook presenting a bunch of techniques would be for the scientists beginning to work on Plant Ecophysiology. In fact, we wrote a short handbook explaining the basics of the techniques taught in that 1997 course: Flow cytometry to measure ploidy levels, Use of a Steady-State porometer to measure transpiration, In vivo measure of fluorescence, HPLC analysis of low molecular weight phenolics, Spectrophotometric determinations of free proline and soluble proteins, TLC polyamines contents measures, Isoenzymatic electrophoresis, Use of IRGA and oxygen electrode. That modest handbook, written in Spanish, was very helpful, both for the people who attended the course and for other who have used it for beginning to work in Plant Ecophysiology. The present Handbook is much more ambitious, and it includes more techniques. But we have also had in mind the young scientists beginning to work on Plant Ecophysiology. In 1999 Francois Pellissier leaded a proposal presented to the European Commission in the Fifth Framework Program in the High Level * Scientific Conferences, including three EuroLab Courses about lab and field techniques useful to improve allelopathic research."

Original studies address key aspects of the conservation and biodiversity of plants. Articles are all peer-reviewed primary research papers, contributed by leading biodiversity researchers from around the world. Collectively, these articles provide a snapshot of the major issues and activities in global plant conservation. Many of the articles can serve as excellent case studies for courses in ecology, restoration, biodiversity, and conservation.

Processes of acidification or alkalization of soils are treated, taking the qualitative changes in soil chemistry into consideration. Following a theoretical background of ecosystem proton budgets, the application for assessing external and internal acid loads are demonstrated. The chemistry of organic matter and the oxides of aluminum, iron, and manganese are treated in the context of being sources and sinks for acid loads in soils. Special attention is payed to the assessment of solubility and reaction kinetics of aluminous minerals. The formation of toxic elements in soil solution resulting from the solubilization of inorganic oxides as well as aspects of changes in the nutrient status of soils, changes of fertility and processes leading to a transfer of acidity from soils to surface are discussed.

In North America, Juniperus woodlands occupy approximately 55 million hectares, an area larger than the state of Texas. This title addresses various aspects of the biology, ecology, and management of Juniperus woodlands and savannas, synthesizing past and current research findings as well as proposed research. The book provides ecologists, land managers, and foresters with a solid foundation in Juniperus ecosystems, enabling them to manage the communities for maximum sustained productivity and diversity.

The series "Chemistry of Plant Protection" continues the handbook "Chemie der Pflanzenschutz- und Schadlingsbekampfungsmittel", edited by R. Wegler. This volume covers contributions in the fields of pesticide degradation, desiccation and defoliation, and the acetyl choline receptor in insects.

Among basic human needs, food is foremost. Finding sufficient, affordable food is still the major concern of one in every five persons on earth. Rice is the basic staple for more than half of the world - and will continue to be well into the future. For this reason, the Interna tional Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has set the goal of improving the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes. As we look toward the 21st century, several important issues cloud food security. World population is growing by almost 100 million people per year, and it is not likely to plateau before the end of the next century. This means that food demand will at least double, and may quadruple. The technologies of the Green Revolution have provided an unprecedented leap in annual rice production, enough to feed 600 million more people, but have had unforeseen social and environmental costs. Loss of genetic diversity and misuse of pesti cides endanger the sustainability of the Green Revolution. Soil ero sion, rural to urban popUlation migration, and increased competition for land and water between urban and agricultural sectors further threaten the sustainability of rice production. Finally, human activi ties may be changing the global climate. Any change in global climate is a potential challenge to the food security offuture generations. The world cannot afford to be unprepared."

Respiration is a large and important component of the carbon economy of crops. There are already several good books dealing with the biochemistry and physiol ogy of plant respiration, but there are none I know of that are devoted to the rela tionship between respiration and crop productivity, although this relationship is more and more frequently being studied with both experiment and simulation. Crop physiology books do cover respiration, of course, but the treatment is limited. The purpose of the present book is to fill this void in the literature. The approach taken here is to use the popular two-component functional model whereby respiration is divided between growth and maintenance components. Mter thoroughly reviewing the literature, I came to the conclusion that at present this is the most useful means of considering respiration as a quantitative compo nent of a crop's carbon economy. This functional distinction is used as the frame work for describing respiration and assessing its role in crop productivity. Discussions and critiques of the biochemistry and physiology of respiration serve primarily as a means of more fully understanding and describing the functional approach to studying crop respiration. It is assumed that the reader of this book is familiar with the fundamentals of plant physiology and biochemistry. The research worker in crop physiology should find this an up-to-date summary of crop respiration and the functional model of respiration. This book is not, however, a simple review of existing data."

This book is a collection of papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Biology and Molecular Biology of Plant-Pathogen Interactions" which was held at Dillington College, Ilminster, UK, 1-6 September 1985. It had been preceded by Advanced Study Institutes at Porte Conte, Sardinia in 1975 and at Cape Sounion, Greece in 1981. In recent years, methods for the manipulation and transfer of genes have revolutionized our understanding of gene structure and function. It was thus opportune to bring together scientists from distinct disciplines, e. g. plant pathology, cytology, biochemistry and molecular biology to discuss our present understanding of cellular interactions between plants. We also explored how the potential offered by the newer molecular technologies could best be realized. It soon became evident at the Workshop, and is a repeated theme of this publication, that future research will need concentrated multi disciplinary programmes. Many of the new approaches will be valuable. For example, immunocytochemistry does, for the first time, allow molecules to be located precisely within infected tissues. Equally, the methods of DNA isolation and gene transformation will facilitate the isolation and characterization of genes associated with pathogenesis and specificity. The description at the Workshop of immunocytochemical protocols and of transformation systems for pathogenic fungi have already stimulated an upsurge in research on plant-pathogen relationships. The papers discuss many interactions between plants and fungal and bacterial pathogens, but also provide a comparison with mycorrhizal and symbiotic relationships, and those involving mycoparasites."

Methane plays many important roles in the earth's environment. It is a potent "greenhouse gas" that warms the earth; controls the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere (OH) indirectly affecting the cycles and abundances of many atmospheric trace gases; provides water vapor to the stratosphere; scavenges chlorine atoms from the stratosphere, terminating the catalytic ozone destruction by chlorine atoms, including the chlorine released from the man-made chlorofluorocarbons; produces ozone, CO, and CO2 in the troposphere; and it is an index of life on earth and so is present in greater quantities during warm interglacial epochs and dwindles to low levels during the cold of ice ages. By all measures, methane is the second only to CO2 in causing future global warming. The book presents a comprehensive account of the current understanding of atmospheric methane, and it is an end point for summarizing more than a decade of intensive research on the global sources, sinks, concentrations, and environmental role of methane.

This book critically examines the idea that the sustainability of agriculture could be improved by mimicking the structure and processes occurring in natural ecosystems. Researchers from around the world present comparative studies of multi-species farming systems, natural ecosystems and conventional agriculture. Case studies from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America examine the implications of increasing the complexity of farming systems on water and nutrient cycling, productivity and resilience. Theoretical issues discussed include the role of biodiversity in agriculture, the trade-off between perenniality and productivity, the choice to integrate or segregate production and conservation in an agricultural landscape, and the social and economic challenges to adopting complex farming systems. One section is devoted to the application of this concept in southern Australia, where 15 million hectares of land are expected to be affected by salinity by the middle of the next century unless there is a significant change in agricultural practice.

The compartmentation of genetic information is a fundamental feature of the eukaryotic cell. The metabolic capacity of a eukaryotic (plant) cell and the steps leading to it are overwhelmingly an endeavour of a joint genetic cooperation between nucleus/cytosol, plastids, and mitochondria. Alter ation of the genetic material in anyone of these compartments or exchange of organelles between species can seriously affect harmoniously balanced growth of an organism. Although the biological significance of this genetic design has been vividly evident since the discovery of non-Mendelian inheritance by Baur and Correns at the beginning of this century, and became indisputable in principle after Renner's work on interspecific nuclear/plastid hybrids (summarized in his classical article in 1934), studies on the genetics of organelles have long suffered from the lack of respectabil ity. Non-Mendelian inheritance was considered a research sideline ifnot a freak by most geneticists, which becomes evident when one consults common textbooks. For instance, these have usually impeccable accounts of photosynthetic and respiratory energy conversion in chloroplasts and mitochondria, of metabolism and global circulation of the biological key elements C, N, and S, as well as of the organization, maintenance, and function of nuclear genetic information. In contrast, the heredity and molecular biology of organelles are generally treated as an adjunct, and neither goes as far as to describe the impact of the integrated genetic system."

Integrated control of pests was practiced early in this century, well before anyone thought to call it "integrated control" or, still later, "integrated pest management" (IPM), which is the subject of this book by Mary Louise Flint and the late Robert van den Bosch. USDA entomologists W. D. Hunter and B. R. Coad recommended the same principles in 1923, for example, for the control of boll weevil on cotton in the United States. In that program, selected pest-tolerant varieties of cotton and residue destruction were the primary means of control, with insecticides consid ered supplementary and to be used only when a measured incidence of weevil damage occurred. Likewise, plant pathologists had also developed disease management programs incorporating varietal selection and cul tural procedures, along with minimal use of the early fungicides, such as Bordeaux mixture. These and other methods were practiced well before modern chemical control technology had developed. Use of chemical pesticides expanded greatly in this century, at first slowly and then, following the launching of DDT as a broadly successful insecticide, with rapidly increasing momentum. In 1979, the President's Council on Environmental Quality reported that production of synthetic organic pesticides had increased from less than half a million pounds in 1951 to about 1.4 billion pounds-or about 3000 times as much-in 1977."

Although plant genes were first isolated only some twelve years ago and transfer of foreign DNA into tobacco cells first demonstrated some eight years ago, the application and extension of biotechnology to agricultural problems has already led to the field-testing of genetically modified crop plants. The promise of tailor-made plants containing resistance to pests or diseases as well as many other desirable characteristics has led to the almost compulsory incorporation of molecular biology into the research programs of chemical and seed companies as well as Governmental agricultural agencies. With the routine transformation of rice and the early evidence of transformation of maize the possibility of the world's major cereal crops being modified for improved nutritional value or resistance characteristics is now likely in the next few years. The increasing number of cloned plant genes and the increasing sophistication of our knowledge of the major developmental and biochemi cal pathways in plants should eventually allow us to engineer crop plants with higher yields and with less detrimental impact on the environment than now occurs in our current high input agricultural systems. This book draws together many of the expanding areas of plant molecular biology and genetic engineering that will make a substantial contribution to the development of the more productive and efficient crop plants that the world's farmers will be planting in the next decade."

Carbon and Nitrogen in the Terrestrial Environment is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary description of C and N fluxes between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere; issues related to C and N management in different ecosystems and their implications for the environment and global climate change; and the approaches to mitigate emission of greenhouse gases.

Drawing upon the most up-to-date books, journals, bulletins, reports, symposia proceedings and internet sources documenting interrelationships between different aspects of C and N cycling in the terrestrial environment, Carbon and Nitrogen in the Terrestrial Environment fills the gap left by most of the currently available books on C and N cycling. They either deal with a single element of an ecosystem, or are related to one or a few selected aspects like soil organic matter (SOM) and agricultural or forest management, emission of greenhouse gases, global climate change or modeling of SOM dynamics.

This book reviews the latest assessments of climate variability and climate change, and their impacts on agriculture and forestry, and recommends appropriate adaptation strategies for reducing the vulnerability of agriculture and forestry to climate variability and climate change. Among other solutions, the text offers management strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from different agroecosystems, and proposes the use of seasonal climate forecasts to reduce climate risk.

An up-to-date compilation of the theoretical background and practical procedures involved in lignin characterization. Whenever possible, the procedures are presented in sufficient detail to enable the reader to perform the analysis solely by following the step-by-step description. The advantages and limitations of individual methods are discussed and, more importantly, illustrated by typical analytical data in comparison to results obtained from other methods. This handbook serves the need of researchers and other professionals in academia, the pulp and paper industry as well as allied industries. It is equally useful for those with no previous experience in lignin or lignocellulosics.

The results, published in this book, present the outcome of a cooperative research between plant ecologists, physiologists and population geneticists. The project received generous financial support from the Foundation for Bio logical Research, which is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. During the course of the Project the value of the in tegrative approach on a limited number of Plantago species and populations became evident and it was decided that the results should be published as a book. The start of the preparation of the "plantago" book was done by Dr. P. J. M. van der Aart and Dr. H. Lambers but due to their appointment as full professor of the University of Utrecht they were both unable to continue. We are greatly indebted to Van der Aart and Lambers for the groundwork they have laid. The book presents a sample of results obtained over a period of more than 10 years. Research on Plantago is still continuing, as evident from a number of publications and doctoral theses. We want to thank the authors for their pa tience and assistance to complete the job. The editorial assistance of Mrs. I. Cameron-Doornbos was extremely valuable, as well as the help of Mr. E. Leeuwinga und Mrs. N. Tolmeijer with the drawings and the help of Mrs. T. E. Stuit with the list of references."

The vascular tissue of higher plants has been an object of continuous detailed study since the invention of the light microscope. As relevant new physical, chemical and biochemical techniques and concepts have appeared over the years, they have regularly and immediately been applied to this field of enquiry. The reasons are not far to seek. Vascular tissue provides the long-distance transport system for water and nutrients within the plant, and an understanding of the structure and development of the pathways within it is essential for an under- standing of growth in all higher plants, including crop plants. Moreover, parts of the vascular tissue - the whole of the xylem and the fibers of the proble- have been, and still are, in high demand commercially for their unique properties and as the only renewable structural material on earth. There are, in addition, more subtle ways in which xylogenesis, particularly as it allows the development of tree species, contributes to the environment. A few years ago, while walking in the foothills of the Pyrenees, I found all this expressed more elegantly than I can express it, in a plea carved in wood at the entrance to a forest: Homme!! Je suis la chaleur de ton foyer par les froids nuits d'hiver, l'ombrage ami lorsque brule Ie soleil d'ete, l'eau des rivieres et des sources. Je suis la charpente de ta maison, la planche de ta table.

All meat has been grass. This statement of the old Greeks is still valid and thus plants contribute to the needs of a growing world popula tion. Their other key role for human life is reflected by their photosynthetic activity. Intensive agriculture reduces the carbon diox ide content of the atmosphere. The improvements of cultivated plants towards stable yields and desired quality characteristics are the sub jects of plant breeding. Here, an introductory picture of the present state of this topic in research and application is given. The senior author, H. Kuckuck, wrote the first edition in 1939 as a small German booklet, hence the nickname little cuckoo (Kuckuck = Engl. cuckoo). During the last 6 years (the fifth German edition appeared in 1985) again numerous results of basic research have found practical application, making extensive additions neces sary. Further, it seemed timely to change to the international language of science: English. For help in translation we are grateful to Silke Kluth and Kathy Seaman. Since agricultural sciences - like all others - have become more specialized, we were happy to welcome D. Baringer (Sect. 5.4), W. Hondelmann (Sects. 4.4, 4.5, and 6), V. Stoy (Sect. 4.2), and T. Thtlioglu (Sects. 2.3.1.4 and 3.5) as contributors to this edition. Finally, we would like to thank Springer-Verlag for all their efforts in helping to transform a small German booklet into a book available to a wider audience."

With one new volume each year, this series keeps scientists and advanced students informed of the latest developments and results in all areas of botany. The present volume includes reviews on plant physiology, genetics, taxonomy and geobotany.