Temperate Crop Science and Breeding: Ecological and Genetic Studies

This new collection covers a wide variety of research on the ecological aspects of crops growing under stress conditions due to atmospheric changes and pollution and the impact on both plant and human health. The book provides research that will help to find ways to overcome adverse abiotic environmental factors and unfavorable anthropogenic pressures on crop plants, which also eventually impact human health.

Divided into six parts, leading authors from many institutes provide and share new knowledge gained from studies on ecological and genetic controls of plant resistance to various adverse environmental factors. Geneticists and breeders are creating new cultivars and hybrids of crops, which greatly expand the range of source material. The book includes a range of material on the biology, genetics, and breeding of crops, taking into account ecological and climatic conditions, with emphasis on the impact to humans. The main agricultural crops are studied: cereals, fodder crops, and horticultural plants. The chapters include the interaction of plant–soil–environment, ways of using plants as anticancer drugs, and other important problems and trends in agricultural and nature management.

The role of different genetic and agronomical approaches to improving plant productivity and seasonal and profile dynamics of elements of soil acidity are considered. With the increasing demand and consumption of vegetables and fruits (by themselves or as additions to other foods), new agricultural methods are needed to overcome the deficit, and these new methods pose new concerns.

The book includes:

• Plant breeding under adverse conditions of acid soils
• New studies in horticultural crop science
• Ecological peculiarities of particular regions and cytogenetic anomalies of the local human population
• Phenogenetic studies of cultivated plants and biological properties of the seeds
• Anthropogenic pressure on environmental and plant diversity
• Methods of evaluation of the quantitative and qualitative characters of selection samples

The research found here will be valuable to agricultural engineers and others and is applicable at both regional and international levels.

Sarra A. Bekuzarova, DSc in agriculture, is head of the Laboratory at Plant Breeding of Fodder Crops at the North Caucasus of Institute of Mountain and Foothill Agriculture of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. She is also a professor at Gorsky State University of Agriculture, Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia, as well as a professor at L. N. Kosta Khetagurov North-Ossetia State University, Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia.

She is also a prolific author, researcher, and lecturer, and has received the Medal of Popova. She is a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences as well as a member of the International Academy of Authors of Scientific Discoveries and Inventions, the International Academy of Sciences and Ecology, All-Russian Academy of Non-traditional and Rare Plants, and the International Academy of Agrarian Education, among others. She is a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals and co-edited the books Ecological Consequences of Increasing Crop Productivity: Plant Breeding and Biotic Diversity, and Biological Systems, Biodiversity, and Stability of Plant Communities.

Nina Anatolievna Bome, DSc in agriculture, is professor and head of the Department of Botany, Biotechnology and Landscape Architecture at the Institute of Biology at the Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia. She is the author of monographs, articles, schoolbooks, and patents, and she is a lecturer. She is the director and founder of the Scientific School for Young Specialists. She is the author of about 300 publications. She participates in long-term Russian and international programs. Her main field of interest concerns basic problems of adaptive potential of cultivated crops, mutagenesis, possibility of conservation, enhancing biodiversity of plants, methods of evaluation of plants’ resistance to the phytopatogens and other unfavorable environmental factors, and genetic resources of cultivated plants in the extreme conditions of the Western Siberia. She is a co-editor of the books Ecological Consequences of Increasing Crop Productivity: Plant Breeding and Biotic Diversity and Biological Systems, Biodiversity, and Stability of Plant Communities (Apple Academic Press).

Anatoly Iv. Opalko, DSc, is a professor and head of the Physiology, Genetics, Plant Breeding and Biotechnology Division at the National Dendrological Park "Sofiyivka" of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Uman, Cherkassy region, Ukraine, and a professor and Genetics, Plant Breeding and Biotechnology Сhair in Uman National University of Horticulture, Uman, Ukraine. He is also the head of the Cherkassy Regional Branch of the Vavilov Society of Geneticists and Breeders of Ukraine. He is also a prolific author, researcher, and lecturer. He has received several awards for his work, including the badge of honor for "Excellence in Agricultural Education" and the badge of honor of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for professional achievement. He is member of many professional organizations and on the editorial boards of the Ukrainian biological and agricultural science journals. In 2013 he was a co-editor of the books Ecological Consequences of Increasing Crop Productivity: Plant Breeding and Biotic Diversity and Biological Systems, Biodiversity, and Stability of Plant Communities (Apple Academic Press).

Larissa I. Weisfeld, PhD, is a senior researcher at the N. M. Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia, and a member of the N. I. Vavilov Society of Geneticists and Breeders. She is the author of about 300 publications in scientific journals, patents, and conference proceedings, as well as the co-author of a work on three new cultivars of winter wheat. Her research interests concern the basic problems of chemical mutagenesis, cytogenetic, and the other ecological problems. She has worked as a scientific editor at the publishing house Nauka (Moscow) and of the journals Genetics and Ontogenesis. In 2013 she was a co-editor of the books Ecological Consequences of Increasing Crop Productivity: Plant Breeding and Biotic Diversity and Biological Systems, Biodiversity, and Stability of Plant Communities (Apple Academic Press).