This comprehensive book covers the underlying scientific principles, state of the art technologies and methodologies of plant mutagenesis. It covers historical development and commonly used terminologies, chemical and physical mutagenesis, mutation induction, mutation breeding and mutations in functional genomics research. Suitable both as a book for professionals and a resource for students in plant breeding and research, the book includes exemplary cases of practical applications and an appendix of recommended doses of gamma and fast neutron irradiation for almost 200 plant species. Researchers, students and breeders in plant sciences and genetics may be equally interested in this book.
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Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology
2011
Book
Edited by Q.Y. Shu, B.P. Forster, H. Nakagawa.
Introduction
Before the turn of the 21st century, experiments in plant mutagenesis were driven by the potential use of mutants in plant improvement. During the past ten years, genomics and molecular techniques have become part of plant mutagenesis research and induced mutants have become an established resource in genomics studies. Although plant-induced mutagenesis has been used widely as a tool in basic studies and practical breeding programmes, it is seldom considered to be an independent subject by plant scientists or plant breeders.
There are only a very limited number of books or other publications with comprehensive treatments of this subject, particularly its principles and technologies, which sometime leads to ambiguous concepts and misuse of scientific terms. This book describes the underlying principles of plant experimental mutagenesis, its associated enabling technologies and its application to research and plant breeding. Examples and success stories are given to illustrate the practicality of methods. In order to understand these and subsequent subjects the reader must become acquainted with the common terminology of the discipline.