Plant Microbiology

Molecular methods have revolutionized the study of plant-microbe relationships. Gillings and Holmes (biological sciences, Macquarie U., Sydney, Australia) introduce 14 chapters by international scientists reviewing topics of interest for scientific and economic reasons. Several papers treat advances in the characterization of associations between mycorrhizal fungi and their plant hosts, and how agricultural practices (e.g., the introduction of transgenic organisms) and climate change might affect bacterial communities. Other contributors present examples of pathogen diversity discovered through molecular methods, discuss how such methods might yield new disease diagnosis and control strategies, and argue for the importance of maintaining microbial cell culture collections as a genetic resource. BIOS Scientific Publishers is an imprint of Taylor & Francis. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)