This book provides comprehensive information on micropropagation of economically important forest and fruit trees, which is usually available in scattered literature. Topics cover a wide range, from tropical forest and fruit trees for paper or food supply, to Prunus species for local craft bark production.

During the past decade, Plant Tissue Culture (PTC) has attracted considerable attention because of its vital role in plant biotechnology. PTC offers novel approaches to plant production, propagation, and preservation. Some in vitro techniques are being applied on a commercial scale while many others hold great potential. Consequently, the literature in this area has grown rapidly.This book deals with recent developments in plant tissue culture, and presents a critical assessment of the proven and potential applications of the various in vitro techniques, it also highlights current problems limiting the application of tissue culture, and projects the future lines of research in this field.

Plant tissue culture techniques help in understanding basic life processes, which is essential to improving crop productivity. Furthermore, recently molecular biology has assumed great importance with respect to plant biotechnology. This book combines all three aspects into one with a focus on practical applications of various techniques. It discusses micropropagation studies on several crop plants, the molecular basis of understanding various life processes including the molecular basis of somatic embryogenesis, and other physiological and biochemical processes having significant biotechnological applications. It also covers in vitro studies of certain important plants like Aloe vera, Simmondsia chinensis, Anacyclus pyrethrum and Crataeva nurvala, Arachis hypogaea L., Phoenix dactylifera, Dendrocalamus asper, Asparagus adescendens Roxb., natural products of plant origin with their therapeutic potential and biotechnological production, as well as genome analysis of crop plants with future applications in biotechnology.

Micropropagation is a technology that has developed within the past 30 years. Earlier overviews of plant tissue culture have reviewed micropropagation as just one of many tissue culture procedures in use. Since the applications of this technology have multiplied so rapidly in recent years, we decided that a specific overview of the technology was now appropriate Our book begins with a review of the general principles of tissue culture as applied to micropropagation. This review is concise since the general topic has been covered in numerous other books and reviews. The basic principles of laboratory design and construction are summarized in the second chapter. Common problems encountered in micropropagation, both during and after culture, are examined in detail in four chapters. As micropropagation developed from a laboratory curiosity to a commercial industry, different considerations became important. These are discussed in two chapters. An attempt has been made to assess the current status of commercial production around the world. This has been difficult because commercial production figures are often closely guarded and little has been done to collect statistics on this growing industry. Applications to a broad range of crops are discussed in a series of chapters. These try to report the state of the art in each area, but since applications for some crops are much more advanced than for others, the focus of these chapters varies depending upon the progress that has been made.

This monograph aims at bringing out a comprehensive collection of information on bamboo varieties in South Asia. The main focus of this book is to address the ecological and economic significance of bamboos. Bamboo is a versatile group of plants, capable of providing ecological, economic and livelihood security to the people. In the tropics, especially the rural areas in different countries of South Asia, most of the houses are made of bamboos. In the hilly areas of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and India, the tribal people take bamboo shoots as one of their major food items since prehistoric days. With palatable shoots and grass like leaves bamboo plants have also been liked by many herbivore animals, such as, elephants, the wild cattle, Indian Bison, and some species of deer. The red-panda in the Himalayas, and primates, pigs, rats and mice, porcupines, and squirrels are also incidental feeders on southeast Asian bamboos. There has been a growing awareness in recent years about the values of bamboo being an important means of economic growth and for improving the socio-economic conditions of the rural poor. Bamboo as an industrial material can substitute wood and that to at low cost. Due to increasing demand and squeezing of bamboo area the plants have been overexploited and the quality and quantity of resource alarmingly getting depleted. Besides many new bamboo based industries have come up which also urgently require uninterrupted supply of species wise bamboo resource. The south Asia region has bestowed with more than 300 bamboo species with enormous diversities at species, ecological and genetical level. A number of bamboo species are found common among countries of the region selected for various utilization potentials having wide range of ability to adjust environmental conditions of these countries and thus prioritized for cultivation. Both government and private planters in the region have started allocating funds, land and other logistics to raise large scale plantation of desired bamboo species. This book has been drafted to find out answers of the most pertinent queries based on the field observations on each of the bamboo species and knowledge learnt from the indigenous people living with bamboos in different parts of south-east and south Asian countries. This monograph would be interesting and useful to bamboo professionals, foresters, horticulturists, field level extension workers, nurserymen, planters, industrial entrepreneurs, ecologists, and valuable source of reference to the relevant researchers and students in the region.

This book brings together chapters related to sustainable utilization of biological resources, including in situ and ex situ conservation of rare, endangered, and threatened plants. The title also gives a special emphasis on marine sponges and mangrove ecosystems, which are two important untapped potential resources of the marine ecosystem and play a key role in maintaining the marine ecosystem. There is an urgent need for the conservation, exploration and utilization of bioresources for the growth and survival of human beings. Due to the significant reduction in biological resources, many countries are developing strategic action plans for the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources. That is where this book fills the gap by discussing the significant development of new products and methodologies for sustainable utilization of these resources. This book also unveils a world of novel bioactive molecules from medicinal plants and the marine ecosystem and explains how drug design pipelines can advance modern drug development. The target audiences for this book include biodiversity researchers who are working on technology and bioresource management issues and faculty and students in the environment research areas and Biodiversity conservation.

World population is increasing at an alarming rate and this has resulted in increasing tremendously the demand for tree products such as wood for construction materials, fuel and paper, fruits, oils and medicines etc. This has put immense pressure on the world’s supplies of trees and raw material to industry and will continue to do so as long as human population continues to grow. Also, the quality of human diet, especially nutritional components, is adversely affected due to limited genetic improvement of most of fruit trees. Thus there is an immediate need to increase productivity of trees. Improvement has been made through conventional breeding methods, however, conventional breeding is very slow due to long life cycle of trees. A basic strategy in tree improvement is to capture genetic gain through clonal propagation. Clonal propagation via organogenesis is being used for the production of selected elite individual trees. However, the methods are labour intensive, costly, and produce low volumes. Genetic gain can now be captured through somatic embryogenesis. Formation of embryos from somatic cells by a process resembling zygotic embryogenesis is one of the most important features of plants. In 1958, Reinert in Germany and Steward in USA independently reported somatic embryogenesis in carrot cultures. Since then, tremendous progress in somatic embryogenesis of woody and non-woody plants has taken place. It offers a potentially large-scale propagation system for superior clones.