Plant Physiology (Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering)

Book Preface

The past decades came with tremendous advances in understanding molecular systems that lie at the core of life itself, a fact which has revolutionized biological research and the field of plant physiology was not an exception. Moreover, with the current advent of high throughput technologies in genomics and proteomics the potential appears to reveal the most subtle details regarding the molecular actors and the processes in which they are involved. But for being able to interpret and make use of such complex data, to understand its place and significance in the global context of plant metabolism, one must first hold basic knowledge of the key processes in the life of the plants, integrated across several dimensions like structure, function, ecology, etc. Plant physiology can offer such an integrated view.

The subject of plant physiology is highly interdisciplinary and builds upon the knowledge derived from fields like botany, zoology, plant morphology and anatomy, cytology, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc. While at the theoretical level one of the priorities is to integrate the information from these scientific areas for a most complete understanding of the processes undergoing in living system, at the practical level this field comes with abundant experimental knowledge and wellestablished practices inherited from previous decades that allow to manipulate crop species in the desired manner, even if the theoretical aspects are not always completely elucidated.

The course, presented by this book, offers the possibility to enter into the essence of the most important phenomena of the living matter—photosynthesis, respiration, growth and development, etc. By being conceived in agreement with the requirements of modern biology, Plant Physiology offers a perspective over the instruments and methods which allow the manipulation of the vegetal organism and which lie at the foundation of biotechnology as we know it today.

The present book is not one that reflects only the principles and fundamental directions of plant physiology by using the scientific literature passed through the prism of own reflections, but also includes results of the personal research summarizing a big volume of experimental data.