Handbook of Plant Virus Diseases presents basic information about viral-caused and viral-like diseases in many cultivated crops. The editors, internationally known plant pathologists, provide authoritative descriptive symptomatic signatures of virus diseases, to aid in the diagnosis and possible control of viruses. This handbook organizes cultivated plants into groups according to their final destinations and uses after harvest-a useful grouping system that indicates that some diseases, their resultant epidemiology, and control measures are characteristic within different groups.

In the recent years, the looming food scarcity problem has highlighted plant sciences as an emerging discipline committed to devise new strategies for enhanced crop productivity. The major factors causing food scarcity are biotic and abiotic stresses such as plant pathogens, salinity, drought, flooding, nutrient deficiency or toxicity which substantially limit crop productivity world-wide. In this scenario, strategies should be adopted to achieve maximum productivity and economic crop returns. In this book we have mainly focused on physiological, biochemical, molecular and genetic bases of crop development and related approaches that can be used for crop improvement under environmental adversaries. In addition, the adverse effects of different biotic (diseases, pathogens etc.) and abiotic (salinity, drought, high temperatures, metals etc) stresses on crop development and the potential strategies to enhance crop productivity under stressful environments are also discussed.

The objective of this book is to provide information to be used as a basis for evaluating the fragile, shaky structure of global food production. The volume analyses the data by region and by intensity of cultivation; and furnishes information about the yield response, giving some indication of the health of the plants. It will be invaluable to all plant and crop scientists as well as to agriculturalists.