Plant Breeding for Water-Limited Environments
"In general, the book will cater to the needs of plant breeders, researchers/scientists, under-graduate, and graduate students in the field of agriculture. It is a valuable contribution to the current knowledge on breeding for drought tolerance and
- PDF / 7,704,986 Bytes
- 266 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 105 Downloads / 196 Views
Abraham Blum
Plant Breeding for Water-Limited Environments
Abraham Blum Tel Aviv Israel [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-7490-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7491-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7491-4 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010937416 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer soft-ware, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
In memory of our daughter Orly who combined science with love for every living thing.
Preface
In my previous book entitled Plant Breeding for Stress Environments (Blum 1988) plant breeding for water-limited environments was only one chapter together with other chapters on heat, cold, mineral deficiency, mineral toxicity and salinity stress. Since that publication several major developments took place regarding plant breeding for stress environments. Firstly, plant molecular biology emerged as a major avenue of research in plant biology and crop science. Plant molecular biology and genomics research towards plant environmental stress has grown exponentially since 1988. The number of published scientific papers specifically on the molecular biology of drought stress and drought resistance increased five-fold from about 10 per year in 1990 to at least 53 per year in 2009. The major dilemma now is how to apply molecular biology and genomics to breeding for stress conditions and specifically for water limited environments. While molecular biologists underline the potential of their discipline and whereas plant breeders underline their needs, there is too much fog lying between the two – which must be cleared up. This book offers to help. Secondly, the plant breeding community realizes now that plant stress must be addressed in plant breeding programs in a dedicated and specific manner. Selecting for yield in diverse environments is not sufficient anymore for coping with stress problems. This approach also became too costly. There is now a growing understanding that breeding for stress conditions and specifically for water limited environments requires specific components within the general breeding program to the same extent that biotic stress resistance is approached. Qualified information on how to design and perform a breeding program component for water limited environme
Data Loading...
