All the chapters of this book constitute the proceedings of the National Symposium entitled Rhizosphere Biotechnology/Microbes Retrospects and prospects held on 29-30 November, 2004, at Department of Botany, T.M. Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur (Bihar). This book includes Special lectures, Review articles and Research papers in the form of Book chapters covering almost all aspects of focal theme of the symposium, which will be of immense utility to the researchers, P.G. students and to those working in allied field.

The book entitled "Plant Stress Tolerance – Physiological & Molecular Strategies" has been especially edited for holistic development of the science of agriculture and crop production under distinctly changing environment. Resource utilization is always overlooked; hence a brief focus on sustainability has been remarkably presented to prove the meaningfulness of this publication. This book brings ingenious applied researches highlighting the major environmental factors coupled with scrupulous strategies in solving abiotic stresses in varied micro and macro agro-climatic conditions , in general, and unfolding the basis for tolerance mechanisms in plant systems, in particular.

Plant Tissue Culture, Second Edition is accompanied with new exercises demonstrating new arrays along with information on development of a customized protocol for protoplast isolation, suspension, haploid cultures, secondary metabolite production, and cryopreservation techniques. All experimental systems are written clear and easy-to-understand manner with the text being well-documented along with detailed drawings containing the plant tissue culture requirements for each particular application. Besides addressing recent advancements on wide variety of topics of Plant Tissue Culture, it gives the practical and technical knowledge required to train the next generation of plant scientists regardless of their ultimate specialization. It includes the complements of both theory and experiments. Plant Scientists, teachers and students will benefit greatly from this clearly presented tissue culture techniques that guides reader from lab setup to supplies, stock solution and media preparation, measurements, explant selection and disinfestations, along with their experimental observations.

The book on “Approaches and Trends in Plant Disease Management” takes stock of the present status of research in plant disease management technologies viz., host resistance, cultural practices, biological, molecular, biotechnological approaches and chemical methods. Besides these, chapters on protected cultivation, nematode problems and their management, climate variables and their impact on plant diseases: retrospect and prospect and rational use of fungicides have also been included.

The main focus of this book is to survey the current status of research, development and use of agriculturally important microorganisms in Asian countries and develop a strategy for addressing critical issues various policy constraints due to which bio-pesticides have found limited applications. In this book the editors have tried to develop a consensus on issues of such as quality requirements, quality control, regulatory management, commercialization and marketing of agriculturally important microorganisms in Asian countries. All these issues are discussed at national level by competent authorities of Asian countries including India, China, Malaysia, Iran, Taiwan, Israel, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Philippines.

This new book, Advances in Plant Microbiome Research for Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Toward Sustainable Farming, covers important aspects of plant microbiome research through contributions from scientists with the latest information available in this area of research. The book provides an introduction to the concept of plant microbiome and its importance for climate-resistant crop plants and discusses the tools and techniques to analyze plant microbiome for sustainable agriculture productivity. It covers microbial endophytes as warriors for plant defense against abiotic and biotic stress. The book also highlights the importance of phyto-microbiomes and presents an overview of the role of metabolomics in bioremediation for sustainable crop production, introducing various metabolomics tools such as GC-MS, LC-MS, and NMR for the sustainable remediation of toxic pollutants from the environment. Web sources and software for metabolomics data interpretation are included as well. The book discusses abiotic and biotic stresses and their effects on crops, the concept and strategies of the rhizosphere microbiome manipulation in crop improvement, the microbial traits in plant stress tolerance and their importance for agriculture, exogenous applications of several compounds and phyto-microbiomes that mitigate the negative effects of salt stress on maize, and the beneficial plant microbial association for sustainable agriculture. With its coverage of the recent research on the current methods and technological advancements for increasing plant resilience to adverse climate scenarios, this volume will be a rich resource for botanists, plant specialists, and researchers concerned with crop science, plant physiology, and plant protection.

Contributed papers presented at a national symposium entitled "Rhizosphere biotechnology/microbs-retrospects and prospects" held on Nov. 29-30, 2004 at the University Dept. of Botany, T.M. Bhagalpur University, India.