Biotechnological Approaches for Sustaining Forest Trees and Their Products

Book excerpt: This edited book gives an in-depth coverage of various aspects of biotechnological procedures followed by international scientists and researchers to sustain growth and improvement of forests in context of current climatic change. Forests especially trees play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance as well as in the functioning of natural ecosystem. More importantly, they contribute to the economic growth of a country through its products such as timber, fuel, pharmaceuticals, fibre for textile industry and edible fruits. The denudation of trees due to urbanisation of towns/cities/villages by various construction activities and industrialisation directly impact the climate change resulting in global warming, short rainfall or erroneous weather currently experienced. This book is an effort to address these problems and attempts to find out solutions using biotechnological approaches. Most of the proposed chapters cover latest information. The proposed book deals with biotechnological aspects of forest trees such as micropropagation, somatic embryogenesis, somaclonal variation, synthetic seeds, cryopreservation, disease amangement and genetic engineering. Further, applications and limitations of these approaches to improve the forest trees are discussed. The book is of relevance to teachers, students and researchers working in area of forest and plant biotechnology globally.