Flowering Plants: Structure and Industrial Products

Book Preface

My inspiration for writing a book on Applied Plant Biology came from many authors whose work has captivated my imagination, since I was an undergraduate student. I have been teaching Applied Plant Biology to undergraduate and postgraduate students for the last 12 years. It is not only my area of specialization but my passion as well. Being a botanist, I always felt the urge for a book which relates plant structure with their important functional products and commercial applications. I believe that angiosperms structure and their important products need to be discussed together in order to have a clear understanding of how the plant architect influences the formation of important products.

The following book relates morphological aspects of flowering plants alongwith their products in different industries in a unique, informative, more conceptual and an interesting way with research‐based and updated knowledge. There is a strong need to correlate flowers of angiosperms with their compounds of industrial importance as it is rare to find books which characterize and highlight important products of angiosperms from flowers, fruits and seeds alongwith their morphology. I am sure that with the necessary topics covered, the following book can be introduced as a textbook for all students of plant biology as it will capture their interest towards plants biology. Students all over the world find the study of plants more or less difficult or dry, which does not always aspire their general interest. One of the reason behind this is that the general consensus amongst the academic scientific community has negated the plant sciences its real position due to other emerging trends in biological sciences. Consequently, subjects characterized in the realm of fundamental sciences are loosing their inert value as one of the integral components in comprehending biology.

Although this book is primarily designed for the students of plant sciences, it is also be helpful for researchers who are associated with the different industries, as it covers plants products of commercial value that are being used by food, agriculture, pharmaceutical, beverages, textile, dye, floriculture, perfume, and cosmetic industries.

This book covers topics like making of bioengineered bacterial perfumes from roses, development of transgenic herbivores resistant plants, modern trends in developing ornamental medicinal plants, plant‐derived nutraceuticals, plant pigments as dyesensitized cells and also the role of plant hormones as antiaging molecules. Various distillation methods and techniques like supercritical CO2 methods for extraction of essential oils, gas chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques are also included. Life cycles of plants and evolutionary relationships in molecular phylogenetics are included with future perspectives to develop student’s interests in plant biology.

It also explains diversity in floral cells which relate their metabolic activities, how cells of sepals differ from petals, ovary and stamens, and how they manage carbohydrates to fulfill their energy demands? In addition, it also covers the formation of important products within floral cells, intercellular and intracellular communications and different steps which are involved in making them commercial; molecular aspects of pollination, pigmentation and reproduction events in angiosperms are also discussed.