Trends in Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology

Contents: 1. Recent developments and issues in plant sciences/Govind Chandra Sharma. 2. Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer in plants-a review/D.K. Srivastava. 3. Biotechnology: miracle or mirage II. remarkable genetic system of agrobacterium/C. Nirmala and M.L.H. Kaul. 4. Synthetic seed technology as a method for plant propagation and delivery of tissue cultured plants/P.S. Rao, T.R. Ganapathi, P. Suprasanna and V.A. Bapat. 5. Maturation and desiccation of somatic embryos/V.A. Bapat and P.S. Rao. 6. Commercial application of medicinal plant biotechnology/M.R. Heble and G.Roja. 7. Genetic variation in vitro cultured plant cells and in the progenies of Regenerated plants/S.J. Jambhulkar and C.R. Bhatia. 8. In vitro response as aid to measure genetic diversity/Sumitra Sen. 9. Phytochrome, flowering, genes and biotechnology/S.C. Maheshwari. 10. Tissue culture of aquatic plants and its applications/H.Y. Mohan Ram and Anuradha Agrawal. 11. Auxin-calcium interaction in plant growth and development/S.C. Bhatla, Geetika Kalra and Sangeeta Kapoor. 12. Role of Glyoxalase I in cell proliferation in higher plants/Renu Deswal and Sudhir K. Sopory. 13. Rapid propagation of Eucalyptus tereticornis Sm. through tissue culture/R.I.S. Gill, S.S. Gill and S.S. Gosal. 14. Regeneration and phenolics in explants and callus of Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels/Shashi Mathur, L.K. Pareek and N. Chandra. 15. Cellular approaches to salt tolerance in wheat/E.J.Joseph and I.D. Nikiforova. 16. Manipulation of wheat protein quality/P.R. Shewry, A.S. Tatham, N.G. Halford, F.Barro, P. Barcelo and P. Lazzeri. 17. Cellular selection and characterization of Pea lines resistant to culture filtrate of fusarium oxysporum/Ashok Kumar, D.K. Srivastava, V.K. Gupta and U.K. Kohli. 18. Somatic embryogenesis and plant regeneration from immature Cotyledons of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)/P. Sagare, K. Suhasini and K.V. Krishnamurthy. 19. Direct somatic embryogenesis in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)/K. Suhasini, A.P. Sagare and K.V. Krishnamurthy. 20. Regeneration of water stress tolerant callus culture of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)/D.K. Srivastava, V.K. Gupta and D.R, Sharma. 21. Biochemical mechanism of salt tolerance in tomato cultivars/G.Jansi Rani and G. Balakrishnamurthy. 22. In vitro evaluation and regeneration of tomato under NaCl stress/G. Jansi Rani and G. Balakrishnamurthy. 23. In vitro selection of atrazine tolerant cell lines and regeneration studies in Brassica campestris/G.S. Virk and Jaswinder Kaur. 24. Cotton ovule culture: a tool for understanding development and quality/C.P. Malik, Bir Singh and Pushp Sharma. 25. Microspore embryogenesis in Brassica juncea/Abha Agnihotri, G. Seguin-Swartz and R.K. Downey. 26. In vitro morphogenesis and microcorm production in Gladiolus/H.S. Grewal, S.S. Gosal and J.S. Arora. 27. Callus growth response of sunflower explants cultured in vitro/Puspita Samantaray, Gyanaranjan Rout and Prasanta K. Behera. 28. Vitro trees of cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.) a preliminary evaluation/Smitha Hegde, L. D\'Souza, Icy D\'Silva, Alice C. Augustine. 29. Micro propagation of plum (Prunus domestica L.)Atul Kumar, Vandana, A. Kumar and M.C. Nautiyal. 30. Plantlet regeneration from Seed culture of Arundina graminifolia (D.Don) Hochr. and establishment of plantlets under natural conditions/C.M. Sarma and Suchismita Roy. 31. Direct embryo formation and regeneration of plants from embryogenic protoplasts of ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A. Mayer)/Sarita Arya, Inder Dev Arya, Jang, R. Liu and Tage Eriksson. 32 Rapid micropropagation of populus Euramericana trees by callus culture/Veena Agrawal and Shrish C. Gupta. 33. Direct somatic embryogenesis from immature seeds of rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia Roxb.)/G. Lakshmi Sita and M. Muralidhara Rao. 34. Direct organogenesis from internodal segments and apical meristem of shoots of Jatropha curcas L./Neena Nigam, O.P. Saxena and Vincent Braganza. 35. Bioassay for anti-tumor compounds in callus extracts of phyllanthus sps. and Euphorbia Sps./Meena Kumar, Shobhna Saxena, M.A. Anantanandthirth, R.K. Shah and O.P. Saxena. 36. Micropropagation of Butea monosperma (Lam) Taub/Kavitha R. Kulkarni, Smitha Hegde and L.D\'Souza. 37. Plant responses under water and salinity stresses/Jyothi Soni and P.L. Swarnkar. 38. Regeneration of plantlets through tissue culture methods in dicotyledonous fruit trees-a brief review/L.K. Pareek and Shashi Mathur.

"Plant cell and tissue culture has become major tool in the study of an increasing number of fundamental and applied programmes in the plant science. Its increasing use to investigate cell and developmental Biology, Biochemistry, Physiology, genetics and molecular Biology is providing new knowledge about fundamental characteristic of plants. Further more, it has become an integral part of plant Biotechnology research as scientists in various universities, research institutions and number of private companies pursue the development of improved plants for agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

The national symposium on recent advances in Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology was held in December 1994 at the university of Rajasthan, Jaipur to provide a comprehensive national forum for discussion of the latest developments in this rapidly growing field. More than 300 participants attending the symposium from various universities, research institute sand companies from all over the country provided clear evidence that research in this field has expanded rapidly in the last about two decades, a total of 70 scientific papers and more than 150 posters covering virtually all aspects of current research in the field were presented. The number of developments reported in these presentations and the chapters in this volume clearly indicate that he technology is moving forward on a broad front. Particular significance has been the development of gene transfer technology and the rapidly expanding investigation of the molecular biology of plants in the recent years.

The content of this volume reflects the organization of the symposium which was divided into broad subject areas. These subjects were discussed at length in concurrent sessions. The chapters in the volume were written by leading experts in the field. Some of the chapters will provide the reader with a broad review of recent developments and progress in the field in the field of tissue culture. It is hoped that he wide range of authoritative review and views presented by the authors in this volume will provide a useful and exciting stimulus to researchers and students in the field." (jacket)