Recent Trends in Horticultural Biotechnology

Book excerpt: Biotechnology is emerging as one of the most innovative technologies in life sciences and is influencing almost every aspect of human life. It provides a set of tools, which if appropriately integrated with other technologies can be applied for the sustainable development of agriculture. Tissue culture is being used to propagate rapidly difficult to root crops and conserve endangered/rare medicinal plants. PCR technology has made it possible to fingerprint genotypes and understand better their genetic relationship. Genetic transformation through direct and vector mediated gene transfer now makes it possible to incorporate novel genes for desirable traits. The various bioinformatics tools help to interpret the complex data available from biological experiments. the book has two volumes divided into 8 sections comprising of more than 140 research articles and papers.