This new two-volume book categorically provides detailed information on highly demanded and medicinally important plants and their natural habits and habitats, taxonomy, cultivation practices, essential oils, active ingredients, biomolecules, modes of action, drug development, and value additions for marketing purpose. Examples of such plants include Achillea spp. (yarrow), Acorus calamus (sweet flag), Ocimum spp. (basil), Dioscorea spp., Eucalyptus spp., Commiphora spp. (guggul), Kaempferia galanga (aromatic ginger), and Lavandula spp. (lavender). Many others are included in the volume as well. With contributions from international experts, these two volumes present chapters that detail the history of these major medicinal and aromatic plants and also report on systematic botany, advanced production and propagation technologies, plant nutrition, moisture management, intercultivation, plant protection, postharvest technology, processing-value addition, and marketing trade. Further, the book presents promising low-cost and ecofriendly plant products and biomolecules, which are free from side-effects for use as pharmaceuticals and herbal drugs. The most ancient form of medical therapies involving herbs has been neglected for a few decades back and has regained enormous popularity because of the effectiveness and fewer hazardous properties of many medicinal and aromatic plants. Nature has all sorts of protective medicinal compounds within its huge bioresources, which are still being identified for beneficial health purposes. Herbs containing aromatic properties because of their essential oils also have medicinal uses apart from being used as dependable sources of natural fragrance for cosmetics, perfumery, and food industries competing with synthetic aroma chemicals. These volumes will be an excellent and comprehensive compendium for academicians and professionals working in plant resources. The compilation will also be valuable for students, researchers, medical practitioners, farmers, entrepreneurs, traders, industrialists, and NGOs who are involved in research and development and production and pharmaceutics of medicinally important plants.

The field of medicinal/aromatic plant breeding is growing and changing?this resource will help you stay up to date! In this essential book, researchers from large and small laboratories and institutions throughout Europe and the Mediterranean region explore recent developments in the selection and breeding of aromatic and medicinal plants. They take varied approaches?from traditional breeding to the use of molecular markers?and complement them with up-to-date information on biodiversity and resource conservation. From the editors: ?It is widely recognized that a strategy of `conservation through use,? by which plant collection via wild harvesting is replaced by controlled cultivation, is the best way forward if we are to balance human demands with the necessary conservation of the biodiversity represented by these species. That provides one major driving force for research in this field. Another concerns the very real need for improving the quality control of products on the market, both to satisfy consumer demand and to conform with the (justifiably) increasing requirements for standardization and precise identification of the composition of the plant materials being sold for human use. We hope that this volume will give readers a taste of the exciting developments in the field.? Breeding Research on Aromatic and Medicinal Plants examines: breeding for resistance and abiotic factors manipulating natural product accumulation through genetic engineering biochemical and molecular regulation of essential oil accumulation economic and legal considerations that breeders will encounter the ethical aspects of breeding these plants