An international journal of agriculture and natural resource sciences.

Since the publication of the third edition of the Handbook of Plant and Crop Stress, continuous discoveries in the fields of plant and crop environmental stresses and their effects on plants and crops have resulted in the compilation of a large volume of the latest discoveries. Following its predecessors, this fourth edition offers a unique and comprehensive collection of topics in the fields of plant and crop stress. This new edition contains more than 80% new material, and the remaining 20% has been updated and revised substantially. This volume presents 10 comprehensive sections that include information on soil salinity and sodicity problems; tolerance mechanisms and stressful conditions; plant/crop responses; plant/crop responses under pollution and heavy metal; plant/crop responses under biotic stress; genetic factors and plant/crop genomics under stress conditions; plant/crop breeding under stress conditions; empirical investigations; improving tolerance; and beneficial aspects of stressors. Features: Provides exhaustive coverage written by an international panel of experts in the field of agriculture, particularly in plant/crop stress areas Contains 40 new chapters and 10 extensively revised and expanded chapters Includes three new sections on plant breeding, stress exerted to weeds by plants, and beneficial aspects of stress on plants/crops Numerous case studies With contributions from 100 scientists and experts from 20 countries, this Handbook provides a comprehensive resource for research and for university courses, covering soil salinity/sodicity issues and plant/crop physiological responses under environmental stress conditions ranging from cellular aspects to whole plants. The content can be used to plan, implement, and evaluate strategies to mitigate plant/crop stress problems. This new edition includes numerous tables, figures, and illustrations to facilitate comprehension of the material as well as thousands of index words to further increase accessibility to the desired information.

The dynamic and expanding knowledge of environmental stresses and their effects on plants and crops have resulted in the compilation of a large volume of information in the last ten years since the publication of the second edition of the Handbook of Plant and Crop Stress. With 90 percent new material and a new organization that reflects this incre

Protected cropping shelters crops from extreme climatic conditions by modifying the internal growing conditions in their favor. The technology has widely been used for vegetable crops in different climates such as temperate, tropical, subtropical, arid, and semi-arid regions. As climate change is projected to become more severe in the near future, the resulting adverse weather conditions such as higher temperatures, more frequent heatwaves, more variable rainfall patterns, and cyclones will affect vegetable production, in turn affecting crop growth, yield, produce quality, and economic return of growers. The demand for protected cultivation will increase to ensure sustainable production and a stable supply of fresh horticultural produce.

Advances in Soil Science is a review series relevant to all areas of soil science. These reviews, intended primarily for scientists, teachers, and students of soil science, also provide technical background information for many additional workers and groups interested in our natural resources and man's influence on them. This is the eighth volume in the series with an international list of contributors from the United States, India, Canada and New Zealand. It contains four review chapters on the following subjects: factors affecting aluminum transformations in soil; soil productivity in dryland regions of developing countries; changes in soil structure under different cropping systems; properties and management of the depleted soils of India. These contributions present valuable information on a diversity of topics and serve as an excellent source of references.

As computational science and engineering (CSE) become specialized and fragmented, it is easy to lose sight that many topics in CSE have common threads and because of this, advances in one sub-discipline may transmit to another. The presentation of - sults between different sub-disciplines of CSE encourages this interchange for the advancement of CSE as a whole. Of particular interest is the hybrid approach of c- bining ideas from one discipline with those of another to achieve a result that is more significant than the sum of the individual parts. Through this hybrid philosophy, a new or common principle can be discovered which has the propensity to propagate throughout this multifaceted discipline. This volume comprises the selection of extended versions of papers that were p- sented in their shortened form at the 2008 International Conference on Future Gene- tion Communication and Networking (http://www.sersc.org/FGCN2008/) and 2009 Advanced Science and Technology (http://www.sersc.org/AST2009/). We would like to acknowledge the great effort of all in the FGCN2008 and AST 2009 International Advisory Board and members of the International Program Committee, as well as all the organizations and individuals who supported the idea of publishing these advances in communication and networking, including SERSC (http://www.sersc.org/) and Springer. We would like to give special thanks to Rosslin John Robles, Maricel O. Balitanas, Farkhod Alisherov Alisherovish, Feruza Sattarova Yusfovna. These graduate school students of Hannam University attended to the editing process of this volume with great passion.