Plant Genetic Engineering Towards the Third Millennium [Hardcover]

Plant biotechnology offers important opportunities for agriculture, horticulture, and the pharmaceutical and food industry by generating transgenic varieties with altered properties. This is likely to change farming practice and reduce the potential negative impact of plant production on the environment. This volume shows the worldwide advances and potential benefits of plant genetic engineering focusing on the third millennium. The authors discuss the production of transgenic plants resistant to biotic and abiotic stress, the improvement of plant qualities, the use of transgenic plants as bioreactors, and the use of plant genomics for genetic improvement and gene cloning. Unique to this book is the integrative point of view taken between plant genetic engineering and socioeconomic and environmental issues. Considerations of regulatory processes to release genetically modified plants, as well as the public acceptance of the transgenic plants are also discussed. This book will be welcomed by biotechnologists, researchers and students alike working in the biological sciences. It should also prove useful to everyone dedicated to the study of the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the new technologies, while providing recent scientific information on the progress and perspectives of the production of genetically modified plants.

The work is dedicated to Professor Marc van Montagu.
G.P. Bolwell, University of London, UK
...This is a publication relating to a conference held in Havana, Cuba in December 1999. The book was published early in 2000 which is commendable given the timing of the conference and ensures that this volume is timely and topical. It gives an accurate account of that seminal meeting since the reviewer had the privilege to be present and be educated on the broader issues outside the excellent science presented. These issues relating to the ethical, economic and risk to the environment of GM are now global. YelÃ8