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Overview
In these lively and provocative essays, Jerome Malitz explores how ornamental plants could be improved through hybridization and genetic engineering. With the golden age of plant discovery now mainly a thing of the past, the quest for new varieties leads to the laboratory or to chance mutations in the garden. Biotechnological innovations such as protoplast fusion, gene transfer, and in vitro fertilization are already being applied to create new and improved plants. Such scientific methods will no doubt play an ever-increasing role in the development of new garden plants. In easy to understand language, the first part of the book offers an introduction to the basics of taxonomy, heredity, genetic engineering, and biotechnology as they relate to the possibilities for creating new plants for a variety of environments. In addition, Malitz discusses a variety of plant characteristics most pleasing and useful to gardeners, such as vigor; cold, heat, and salt tolerance; disease and insect resistance; and duration of bloom period. The second part of Plants for the Future is an extensive wishlist of detailed breeding goals for specific plants. Forty-five plant families are discussed, presenting their merits and shortcomings - and the characteristics that gardeners admire in them. The author suggests possible hybrids that may bring out the very best traits to enhance the gardens of the future.Editorials
Booknews
A mathematics professor provides gardeners with accessible information about the advancing frontier of plant hybridization and propagation. Malitz first reviews current thinking on taxonomy and genetics before surveying advances in biotechnology as a backdrop to an imaginative discussion of plants that do not<-->yet<-->exist. The second section comprises a wishlist of 45 plant families. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Book Details
Published
September 15, 1996
Publisher
Portland, Or. : Timber Press, c1996.
Pages
270
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780881923490