This volume is the second of the new two-volume Plant Biotechnology set. This volume covers many recent advances in the development of transgenic plants that have revolutionized our concepts of sustainable food production, cost-effective alternative energy strategies, microbial biofertilizers and biopesticides, and disease diagnostics through plant biotechnology. With the advancements in plant biotechnology, many of the customary approaches are out of date, and an understanding of new updated approaches is needed. This volume presents information related to recent methods of genetic transformation, gene silencing, development of transgenic crops, biosafety issues, microbial biotechnology, oxidative stress, and plant disease diagnostics and management. Key features: Provides an in-depth knowledge of various techniques of genetic transformation of plants, chloroplast, and fungus Describes advances in gene silencing in plants Discusses transgenic plants for various traits and their application in crop improvement Looks at genetically modified foods and biodiesel production Describes biotechnological approaches in horticultural and ornamental plants Explores the biosafety aspect associated with transgenic crops Considers the role of microbes in sustainable agriculture

Tea is an important non-alcoholic beverage plant of the world. Cultivation of tea is very important as it earns revenue for the tea growing nations especially the developing countries such as India. Although conventional breeding is well-established and has contributed significantly for varietal improvement of this plant and other Camellia species with ornamental value, yet applications of biotechnology are required to intervene some of the issues where conventional breeding is restricted particularly for woody plants such as tea. It is note-worthy to mention that some amounts of biotechnology works in several facets of tea and its wild species have also been done. In the present book, a state-of-the-art on various aspects of breeding and biotechnology has been complied in eight chapters. They are: i) Origin and descriptions of health benefits as well as morphological classification as first chapter, ii) Breeding and cytogenetics that comprise with various conventional approaches of varietal improvement of tea along with their genetic resources, iii) Micropropagation which deals with in-depth study of clonal propagation, iv) Somatic embryogenesis along with alternative techniques such as suspension culture, cry-preservation etc. v) Molecular breeding that deals with application of various DNA-based markers, linkage map etc., vi) Genetic transformation and associated factors, vii) Stress physiology complied with various works done in tea along with its wild relatives on abiotic as well as biotic stress, and viii) Functional genomics that describe the various works of molecular cloning and characterizations, differential gene expression, high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics etc. Importantly, the author has made exclusive tables in most of the chapters that include the summary of the works in particular topic. In a nutshell, the book compiles the work already been done, identifies the problems, analyzes the gaps on breeding and biotechnological works of tea as well as its wild species and discusses the future scope as conclusion. Every effort has been made to include all the published works till June 2013. The book will be a useful resource for post-graduate, doctoral as well post-doctoral students working on tea as well as other woody plants. This will also be useful for the scientists working in the areas of life sciences, genomics, biotechnology and molecular biology.

"Recent advances in the development of transgenic plants have revolutionized our concepts of sustainable food production, cost-effective alternative energy strategies, microbial biofertilizers and biopesticides, and disease diagnostics through plant biotechnology. As a result, a number of transgenic plants have been developed with improved traits. With the advancement of plant biotechnology, many of the customary approaches are out of date. This new two-volume set, Plant Biotechnology, provides a plethora of current knowledge on new as well as fresh approaches that are necessary to address biological problems in plant food production. The volumes provide an informative tour of plant biotechnology, covering the basics of biotechnology to recent advances, taking a thorough look at applications as well. The editors have brought together a respected group of contributors who address the most recent techniques and their applications in plant biotechnology.Volume 1 covers the principles, techniques, and applications while Volume 2 delves into transgenics, stress management, and biosafety issues.The volumes share recent information related to recent methods of genetic transformation, gene silencing, development of transgenic crops, biosafety issues, microbial biotechnology, oxidative stress, plant disease diagnostics and management, and more. Broken into subsections, the two volumes cover: History, scope and importance of plant biotechnologyPlant tissue cultureTechniques in molecular biologyMolecular markers and QTL mappingGenetic transformationGene silencing in plantTransgenic crops and biosafetyMicrobial biotechnologyOxidative stressPlant disease diagnostics and managementThis two-volume set will be a valuable resource for research and university libraries as well as for the many students engaged in plant biotechnology studies as well as faculty and researchers. "--Provided by publisher.

This paper provides guidelines for new high-throughput screening methods – both phenotypic and genotypic – to enable the detection of rare mutant traits, and reviews techniques for increasing the efficiency of crop mutation breeding.