Search

The book deals with latest research achievements of Brassica scientists using omics approaches in understanding host-pathogen interaction, molecular detection, identification, and functional characterization of effectors/genes including pathogenomics and biometabolomics. Genomics of host-pathogen interaction is a source of information for the teachers, students, researchers, and policy makers to foster success in enhancing the Brassica production and productivity through the development of improved disease-resistant varieties with the use of omics technologies. It is a base and sound plate form for managing biological stresses of Brassica at global level. The book covers up-to-date information on genomics of host-pathogen interaction, pathogenomics of crucifers'pathogen, and biometabolomics of host pathosystem supplemented with ample photographs, illustrations, and figures which make it stimulating, effective, and easy to comprehend for readers, researchers, biology students, teachers, and policy makers.

The first edition of this book, Genetic Mapping and Marker Assisted Selection: Basics, Practice and Benefits, was widely appreciated as the first of its kind on this topic and has been listed as a reference work in several agricultural universities'curricula. A great deal has happened over the last five years, making it high time to incorporate recent developments in genetic mapping and report on novel strategies in marker assisted selection in crop plants as a second edition. This book addresses a range of topics, including: new marker types and their genotyping methods based on high-throughput technologies, advances in genomics and their role in new marker development, improvements in genetic mapping strategies and software updates, developments in phenomics and their applications in QTL mapping, and how to incorporate these developments and advances in marker assisted selection in crop plants. Similar to the first edition, each technique and method is explained usinga step-by-step method, allowing the book to serve as a self-study guide for scholars whose work involves the genetic improvement of crop plants for any trait of interest, particularly for biotic and abiotic stress resistance.In addition, the book offers a valuable guide for undergraduate and graduate students at agricultural universities and institutes that are interested and/or involved in the genetic improvement of crop plants using modern tools. In addition, the bibliography includes a list of suggested works for pursuing further research on the topics covered.

This book provides all aspects of the physiology, stress responses and tolerance to abiotic stresses of the Brassicaceae plants. Different plant families have been providing food, fodder, fuel, medicine and other basic needs for the human and animal since the ancient time. Among the plant families, Brassicaceae has special importance for their agri-horticultural importance and multifarious uses apart from the basic needs. Interest understanding the response of Brassicaceae plants toward abiotic stresses is growing considering the economic importance and the special adaptive mechanisms. The knowledge needs to be translated into improved elite lines that can contribute to achieve food security. The physiological and molecular mechanisms acting on Brassicaceae introduced in this book are useful to students and researchers working on biology, physiology, environmental interactions and biotechnology of Brassicaceae plants.

The agricultural sector of medicinal (including plant stimulants) and aromatic plants is characterized by an enormous number and diversity of species. Only a few of them can be considered cultivated crops in which significant breeding efforts are made. For most species, however, breeding is performed in short-term projects only. Therefore, basic knowledge about these species is still fragmentary. Our intention is to compile and organize the available information on the most commonly utilized plant species into one publication, thereby providing a standardized resource for the researchers and the grower community. This book therefore provides reference source materials for a wide variety of plant species used for human consumption due to their flavor, medicinal or recreational properties. It is divided into a section of general topics on genetic resources, breeding adaptation of analytic methods and a compilation of basic data for DNA content, chromosome number and mating systemfollowed by a section of 20 monographs on a species or species groups.

Linum (flax) is a genus of about 200 species in the flowering plant family Linaceae. The genus includes common flax, which is one of the best fibers to produce linen, the seeds to produce linseed oil and has health-related properties of flax in human and animal nutrition.This book describes the genetics and genomics of Linum including the development of extensive experimental resources (e.g. whole genome sequence, efficient transformation methods, insertional mutant collections, large germplasm collections, resequenced genomes) that have led much progress and its economic importance. The methods and use of Linum to address a wide range of applications (e.g. disease resistance, cell wall composition, abiotic stress tolerance, floral development, natural diversity) is also discussed.

This book presents the latest advances in rice genomics, genetics and breeding, with a special focus on their importance for rice biology and how they are breathing new life into traditional genetics. Rice is the main staple food for more than half of the world's population. Accordingly, sustainable rice production is a crucial issue, particularly in Asia and Africa, where the population continues to grow at an alarming rate. The book's respective chapters offer new and timely perspectives on the synergistic effects of genomics and genetics in novel rice breeding approaches, which can help address the urgent issue of providing enough food for a global population that is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

Next-generation sequencing coupled with high-performance computing methods have revolutionised the field of plant breeding and genetics. In this timely overview of the field, expert scientists review current developments in next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics and discuss their application in understanding and improving agronomic traits such as yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance. The up-to-date reviews cover genome assembly and annotation, omics technologies, structural variations, abnormal chromosome number, chromosomal rearrangement, copy number variation, mobile elements, sequencing of small RNA nucleotides and transcription factor binding sites. Specific topics include the evolution analysis of rice, maize, sorghum and orchids, fruit development and ripening, plant disease resistance, fusarium head blight and stripe rust resistance in wheat and rice, host defence and pathogen virulence, crop design with improved resistance, and biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. This is a useful review of current developments in next-generation sequencing and essential reading for plant geneticists and crop scientists.

This proceedings is a collection of 46 selected papers that were presented at the 12th International Wheat Genetics Symposium (IWGS). Since the launch of the wheat genome sequencing project in 2005, the arrival of draft genome sequences has marked a new era in wheat genetics and genomics, catalyzing rapid advancement in the field. This book provides a comprehensive review of the forefront of wheat research, across various important topics such as germplasm and genetic diversity, cytogenetics and allopolyploid evolution, genome sequencing, structural and functional genomics, gene function and molecular biology, biotic stress, abiotic stress, grain quality, and classical and molecular breeding. Following an introduction, 9 parts of the book are dedicated to each of these topics. A final, 11th part entitled “Toward Sustainable Wheat Production” contains 7 excellent papers that were presented in the 12th IWGS Special Session supported by the OECD. With rapid population growth and radical climate changes, the world faces a global food crisis and is in need of another Green Revolution to boost yields of wheat and other widely grown staple crops. Although this book focuses on wheat, many of the newly developed techniques and results presented here can be applied to other plant species with large and complex genomes. As such, this volume is highly recommended for all students and researchers in wheat sciences and related plant sciences and for those who are interested in stable food production and food security.

As a guide for pharmaceutical professionals to the issues and practices of drug discovery toxicology, this book integrates and reviews the strategy and application of tools and methods at each step of the drug discovery process. • Guides researchers as to what drug safety experiments are both practical and useful• Covers a variety of key topics – safety lead optimization, in vitro-in vivo translation, organ toxicology, ADME, animal models, biomarkers, and –omics tools• Describes what experiments are possible and useful and offers a view into the future, indicating key areas to watch for new predictive methods• Features contributions from firsthand industry experience, giving readers insight into the strategy and execution of predictive toxicology practices

Identification of desirable genotypes with traits of interest is discernible for making genetic improvement of crop plants. In this direction, screening of a large number of germplasm for desirable traits and transfer of identified traits into agronomic backgrounds through recombination breeding is the common breeding approach. Although visual screening is easier for qualitative traits, its use is not much effective for quantitative traits and also for those, which are difficult to score visually. Therefore, it is imperative to phenotype the germplasm accessions and breeding materials precisely using high throughput phenomics tools for challenging and complex traits under natural, controlled and harsh environmental conditions. Realizing the importance of phenotyping data towards identification and utilization of a germplasm as donors, global scientific community has exerted increased focus on advancing phenomics in crop plants leading to development of a number of techniques and methodologies for screening of agronomic, physiological, and biochemical traits. These technologies have now become much advanced and entered the era of digital science. This book provides exhaustive information on various aspects related to phenotyping of crop plants and offers a most comprehensive reference on the developments made in traditional and high throughput phenotyping of agricultural crops.

This comprehensive reference delivers key information on all aspects of sunflower. With over 20 chapters, this book provides an extensive review of the latest developments in sunflower genetics, breeding, processing, quality, and utilization; including food, energy and industrial bioproduct applications. World-renowned experts in this field review U.S. and international practices, production, and processing aspects of sunflower. - Presents seven chapters on improving sunflower production with insights on breeding and genetics; physiology and agronomy; common insect and bird pests; mutagenesis; and identifying and preventing diseases. - Summarizes current knowledge of sunflower oil uses in food, oxididative stability, minor constituents, and lipids biosynthesis. - Ideal reference for scientists, researchers, and students from across industry, academia, and government.

PlantOmics: The Omics of Plant Science provides a comprehensive account of the latest trends and developments of omics technologies or approaches and their applications in plant science. Thirty chapters written by 90 experts from 15 countries are included in this state-of-the-art book. Each chapter describes one topic/omics such as: omics in model plants, spectroscopy for plants, next generation sequencing, functional genomics, cyto-metagenomics, epigenomics, miRNAomics, proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics, lipidomics, secretomics, phenomics, cytomics, physiomics, signalomics, thiolomics, organelle omics, micro morphomics, microbiomics, cryobionomics, nanotechnology, pharmacogenomics, and computational systems biology for plants. It provides up to date information, technologies, and their applications that can be adopted and applied easily for deeper understanding plant biology and therefore will be helpful in developingthe strategy for generating cost-effective superior plants for various purposes. In the last chapter, the editors have proposed several new areas in plant omics that may be explored in order to develop an integrated meta-omics strategy to ensure the world and earth's health and related issues. This book will be a valuable resource to students and researchers in the field of cutting-edge plant omics.

Woody plants constitute an artificial and heterogeneous group of plants that share some common phenotypic characteristics but otherwise have no strong evolutionary relationships, nor do they share a common habitat. They are a primary source of fiber and timber, and also include many edible fruit species. Their unique phenotypic behavior includes a perennial habit associated with extensive secondary growth. Additional characteristics of woody plants include: developmental juvenility and maturity with respect to growth habit, flowering time, and morphogenetic response in tissue cultures; environmental control of bud dormancy and flowering cycles; variable tolerance to abiotic stresses, wounding and pathogens; and long distance transport of water and nutrients. Woody plants, particularly tree species, have been the focus of numerous physiological studies to understand their specialized functions, however, only recently have they become the target of molecular studies. Recent advances in our understanding of signal transduction pathways for environmental responses in herbaceous plants, including the identification and cloning of genes for proteins involved in signal transduction, should provide useful leads to undertake parallel studies with woody plants. Molecular mapping techniques, coupled with the availability of cloned genes from herbaceous plants, should provide shortcuts to cloning relevant genes from woody plants. The unique phenotypes of these plants can then be targeted for improvement through genetic engineering. In this book we present a broad coverage of various aspects of plant molecular biology that are relevant to the improvement of woody plant.

Abiotic stress drastically limits agricultural crop productivity worldwide. Climate change threatens the sustainable agriculture with its rapid and unpredictable effects, making it difficult for agriculturists and farmers to respond to the challenges cropping up from environmental stresses. In light of population growth and climate changes, investment in agriculture is the only way to avert wide scale food shortages. This challenge comes at a time when plant sciences are witnessing remarkable progress in understanding the fundamental processes of plant growth and development. Plant researchers have identified genes controlling different aspects of plant growth and development, but many challenges still exist in creating an apt infrastructure, access to bioinformatics and good crop results. Improvement of Crops in the Era of Climatic Changes, Volume 2 focuses on many existing opportunities that can be applied methodically through conventional breeding, without touching upon the latest discoveries such as the power of genomics to applied breeding in plant biology.Written by a diverse faction of internationally famed scholars, this volume adds new horizons in the field of crop improvement, genetic engineering and abiotic stress tolerance. Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, Improvement of Crops in the Era of Climatic Changes, Volume 2 is a state-of-the-art guide to recent developments vis-à-vis various aspects of plant responses in molecular and biochemical ways to create strong yields and overall crop improvement.

Trees that are indispensably supportive to human life pose a formidable challenge to breed them to suit to human needs. From soft drinks to breweries to beverages to oil to tires, the value added products from trees give a spectrum of products to human kind. While attempts to tap these resources through conventional breeding are underway, the quick and elegant way of manipulating the genetic systems at the genome level is an essential chapter of modern science. Books featuring genomics of tree crops are few, and genomics is such a science that changes rapidly. Genomics of Tree Crops is an earnest attempt towards compiling genomics of tree crops.Plant genomics has made monumental strides in the last decade providing insights into intra-genomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. In contrast, the investigation of the roles and functions of single genes is a primary focus of molecular biology and is a common topic of modern genetic research. A genome is the sum total of all of an individual organism's genes. Thus, genomics is the study of all the genes of a cell, or tissue, at the DNA (genotype), mRNA (transcriptome), or protein (proteome) levels. The complete sequencing of the three billion base pair human genome with 25,000 genes identified and the invention of DNA microarrays ushered in a new era in the science of genomics leading to explosive advancements in oncology diagnostics. This impetus into the genomics era lead the way toward advances in plant genomics which started with Arabidopsis thaliana and went through an array of crops such as rice, maize, papaya, various cereals and legumes, with pigeon pea added to the list towards the end of 2011. Trees, on the other hand, are the least attended taxa with regard to genomic research. Some of the areas that attained attention of the scientists are: DNA sequencing, bioinformatics,genomics of flowering, gene flow, spatial structure, local adaptation and assisted migration in trees, transformation of fruit trees, genomics of tropical and temperate fruit trees, genomics of Hevea rubber, genomics of papaya and genomics of palms. Genomics of Tree Crops compiles this information with chapters authored by experts on these crops.

Crops experience an assortment of environmental stresses which include abiotic viz., drought, water logging, salinity, extremes of temperature, high variability in radiation, subtle but perceptible changes in atmospheric gases and biotic viz., insects, birds, other pests, weeds, pathogens (viruses and other microbes). The ability to tolerate or adapt and overwinter by effectively countering these stresses is a very multifaceted phenomenon. In addition, the inability to do so which renders the crops susceptible is again the result of various exogenous and endogenous interactions in the ecosystem. Both biotic and abiotic stresses occur at various stages of plant development and frequently more than one stress concurrently affects the crop. Stresses result in both universal and definite effects on plant growth and development. One of the imposing tasks for the crop researchers globally is to distinguish and to diminish effects of these stress factors on the performance of crop plants,especially with respect to yield and quality of harvested products. This is of special significance in view of the impending climate change, with complex consequences for economically profitable and ecologically and environmentally sound global agriculture. The challenge at the hands of the crop scientist in such a scenario is to promote a competitive and multifunctional agriculture, leading to the production of highly nourishing, healthy and secure food and animal feed as well as raw materials for a wide variety of industrial applications. In order to successfully meet this challenge researchers have to understand the various aspects of these stresses in view of the current development from molecules to ecosystems. The book will focus on broad research areas in relation to these stresses which are in the forefront in contemporary crop stress research.

The aim of this book is to provide the researcher with important sample preparation strategies in a wide variety of analyte molecules, specimens, methods, and biological applications requiring mass spectrometric analysis as a detection end-point. In this volume we have compiled the contributions from several laboratories which are employing mass spectrometry for biological analysis. With the latest inventions and introduction of highly sophisticated mass spectrometry equipment sample preparation becomes an extremely important bottleneck of biomedical analysis. We have a goal of giving the reader several successful examples of sample preparation, development and optimization, leading to the success in analytical steps and proper conclusions made at the end of the day. This book is structured as a compilation of contributed chapters ranging from protocols to research articles and reviews. The main philosophy of this volume is that sample preparation methods have to be optimized and validated for every project, for every sample type and for every downstream analytical technique.

A few members of the Gossypium (cotton) genus are cultivated for the production of elongated single-celled fibers valued worldwide at about $20 billion annually at the farm gate, and which sustain one of the world's largest industries (textiles) with an annual worldwide economic impact of about $500 billion. In a number of ways, cotton production and the textile industry are closely tied to petrochemical usage. At a practical level, cotton genomics offers both bio-based carbon sequestration alternatives to petrochemical use, and improved sustainability of crop production. The Gossypium (cotton) also genus presents novel opportunities to advance our understanding of the natural world and its organic evolution. In particular, the evolution of cultivated cottons from their wild ancestors has involved a fascinating series of events that offer scientists the opportunity to dissect the evolution of a novel organ, the ‘lint fiber', and also to unravel the consequences of polyploidy, both for the generation of biodiversity and for crop productivity. In this book, advances of the past decade will be summarized and synthesized to elucidate the current state of knowledge of the structure, function, and evolution of the Gossypium genome, and progress in the application of this knowledge to cotton improvement. This book will address five broad topics. First, as a backdrop for all studies of the genus, it is important to understand the naturally-occurring diversity in the genus, its organization and distribution, and its evolutionary history. Of special importance is the formation of a single polyploid from two (among 8) diploid genome types, the radiation of this polyploid, and the domestication and improvement of two (among 5 extant) polyploid species.

Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants presents the current status of the elucidation and improvement of plant genomes of economic interest. The focus is on genetic and physical mapping, positioning, cloning, monitoring of desirable genes by molecular breeding and the most recent advances in genomics. The series comprises seven volumes: Cereals and Millets; Oilseeds; Pulses, Sugar and Tuber Crops; Fruits and Nuts; Vegetables; Technical Crops; and Forest Trees. Vegetables contains reviews in 12 chapters contributed by 31 authors from 10 countries. Covered are tomato, lettuce, radish, carrot, beet, eggplant, cucurbits, onion, garlic and other crops included in Brassica rapa, Brassica oleracea, capsicums and cucurbits. The impressive work that has been done on most of these crops is presented in this volume. Genome projects already initiated on vegetable crops, particularly on Solanaceae and Brassicaceae species, may ignite further interest in other vegetables as well.

Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants presents the current status of the elucidation and improvement of plant genomes of economic interest. The focus is on genetic and physical mapping, positioning, cloning, monitoring of desirable genes by molecular breeding and the most recent advances in genomics. The series comprises seven volumes: Cereals and Millets; Oilseeds; Pulses, Sugar and Tuber Crops; Fruits and Nuts; Vegetables; Technical Crops; and Forest Trees. Cereals and millets form the leading group of field crops, providing staple food for most of the earth's population. This volume, with contributions by 27 eminent scientists, includes chapters on rice, wheat, maize, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, pearl millet, foxtail millet and finger millet. The emphasis is on advanced research on the major crops, including the model plants maize and rice, as well as on future road maps of genomic research for the less-often considered but equally deserving cereals and millets.