Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Pollen biology and pollen biotechnology: an introduction
- Part I Pollen biology: an overview
- Part II Pollen biotechnology and optimization of crop yield
- Part III Pollen biotechnology and hybrid seed production
- Part IV Pollen biotechnology and plant breeding
- Index
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Pollen biology and pollen biotechnology: an introduction
- Part I Pollen biology: an overview
- Part II Pollen biotechnology and optimization of crop yield
- Part III Pollen biotechnology and hybrid seed production
- Part IV Pollen biotechnology and plant breeding
- Index
Summary
Our knowledge of pollen, the gold dust that carries the male germ line of flowering plants and is vital for sexual reproduction and seed formation, has “come of age” with the publication of this book. Here, for the first time in a single volume, are all the ideas and techniques developed in the last two decades concerning the manipulation of pollen and pollen tubes in plant breeding and biotechnology. Pollen has never been an easy topic to come to grips with, with its variable and often inexplicable terminology that has made it a difficult field in which to work. This book will remedy that, with its overview of pollen biology and pollen–pistil interactions that explains terms and concepts of the male function of pollen in a way that is readily understandable.
This new biotechnology of pollen had its origins 40 years ago in developments in plant tissue culture, physiology, and electron microscopy, and, more recently, with the advent of molecular genetics. In reviewing pollen developmental processes and genetic defects in the early 1970s, Professor Jack Heslop-Harrison FRS showed how the opportunities for manipulation might be achieved:
On the one hand, are developmental faults involving deviation from the presumptive behaviour of a spore in the anther, with the production of a female gametophyte or even a sporophyte instead of a pollen grain. On the other hand, are failures of differentiation and various forms of abortion that result in death or gross malfunction. Events of the first category … illustrate the totipotency of the spore nucleus in an immediate and dramatic way, and show that the determination of the fate of the spore depends upon influence acting upon it soon after meiosis. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pollen Biotechnology for Crop Production and Improvement , pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997