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It must have been some feeling of frustration invoked by the genus loci of big conferences which brought Don Dougall, Mike Fowler, and me over a cup of coffee to think of organizing a small meeting on cell culture metabol­ ism. The basic aim was to bring people working on'primary metabolism'and those who work on'secondary metabolism'to interact with each other, hopefully to induce some new approaches to utilize the cell culture technique more efficiently in basic research and in its practical application. The out­ come of this was the small symposium at SchloE Rauischholzhausen near GieEen (Germany), and the reader of this small volume of articles on topics discussed will judge to what extent this aim was realized. Although F.e. Steward was unable to attend the meeting, we were happy that he contributed a review on some important turning points of the cell culture method in the past, and at the end of the book some participants of the meeting attempted some prognosis on possible future developments, summarized by Mike Fowler. It was the wish of our publisher to organize the contributions as a summary of the major topics of research of the individual groups represented at the meeting. Due to this, some readers will certainly feel that important areas of research in the cell culture field are missing. This is regrettable, but space had to be limited to keep this volume at a reasonable price.

This book provides a general introduction as well as a selected survey of key advances in the fascinating field of plant cell and tissue culture as a tool in biotechnology. After a detailed description of the various basic techniques employed in leading laboratories worldwide, follows an extended account of important applications in, for example, plant propagation, secondary metabolite production and gene technology. Additionally, some chapters are devoted to historical developments in this domain, metabolic aspects, nutrition, growth regulators, differentiation and the development of culture systems. The book will prove useful to both newcomers and specialists, and even “old hands” in tissue culture should find some challenging ideas to think about.