Horticulture is becoming an increasingly important enterprise in many agro-based economies with increasing demand for fruits, vegetables, ornamental plants, beverages and spices besides medicinal and aromatic plants. The science of biotechnology has become more commercial with most of the techniques being patented. The use of biotechnology in solving many of the problems confronting the horticulture-based industries needs no emphasis. The development of the basal media by Murashige and Skoog has virtually revolutionized micropropagation research. The use of molecular markers based on electrophoretic and PCR techniques for fingerprinting germplasm has become very popular in many countries and is being used to conserve and fingerprint their native varieties and cultivars. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation techniques as well as biolistic methods have come handy for transferring genes of interest to many crops. Considering the importance of it the editors decided to bring out the work on horticultural biotechnology in three volumes. It is hoped that this would be useful to students, researchers and practitioners of biotechnology and horticulture. Many eminent biotechnologists, primarily from India, have contributed to this book. The works done on tissue culture, molecular markers, genetic transformation and cryopreservation have been reviewed for each of the horticultural crops separately. The articles also indicate the areas where the technologies are to be used in future research. The entire work has been brought out in three volumes. The first volume covers fruits and plantation crops including basic topics like protoplast technology, molecular markers, genetic transformation and microbes for N and P input while the second volume covers vegetable crops and mushrooms and the third volume ornamental plants, spices, medicinal and aromatic plants.
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