Friday, 13 September 2013

Introduction to Plant Physiology; Fourth Edition

This is a book about how plants work. It is about the questions that plant physiologists ask and how they go about seeking answers to those questions. Most of all, this book is about how plants do the things they do in their everyday life. The well-known conservationist John Muir once wrote: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything in the universe. Muir might well have been referring to the writing of a plant physiology textbook. The scope of plant physiology as a science is very broad, ranging from biophysics and molecular genetics to environmental physiology and agronomy. Photosynthetic metabolism not only provides carbon and energy for the growing plant, but also determines the capacity of the plant to withstand environmental stress. The growth and development of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers are regulated by a host of interacting factors such as light, temperature, hormones, nutrition, and carbon metabolism. As a matter of practical necessity more than scientific reality, we have treated many of these topics in separate chapters. To get the most out of this book, we suggest you be aware of these limitations as you read and think about how various mechanisms are integrated to form a functional plant.

Plant physiology is also a very active field of study and new revelations about how plants work are reported in the literature almost daily. Many models and explanations contained in this book may have been revised by the time the book appears on the market. If you find a particular topic interesting and wish to learn more about it, the listed publications at the end of each chapter are your gateway into the relevant research literature. You can learn what has happened since this book was written by seeking out reviews and opinions published in the more recent editions of those same journals. In spite of its presumed objectivity, science ultimately relies on the interpretation of experimental results by scientists—interpretations that are often found to be inadequate and filled with uncertainty. However, as results and observations accumulate, interpretations are refined and the degree of uncertainty diminishes. This is the nature of scientific discovery and the source of the real excitement of doing science. In this book, we have attempted to convey some sense of this scientific process.


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