Economic Botany

The strength of this book is that it is written by someone who has spent a lifetime devoted to the science of economic botany. The author has brought together his vast experience in the field in Africa with his studies of arid land plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The result is an informative and reliable text that covers a vast range of topics. It is also firmly based upon the author's research and interest in plant taxonomy and therefore fully acknowledges the importance of correct naming and classification in the field of science of economic botany. The coverage is of economic botany in its broadest sense. I was delighted to find such topics as ecophysiology, plant breeding, the environment and conservation are included in the text. This gives the book a much more comprehensive coverage than most other texts on the subject. I was also glad to see that the book covers the use of various organisms that are no longer considered part of the plant kingdom such as various species of fungi and algae. It is indeed a broad ranging book that will be of use to many people interested in the uses of plants and fungi. Economic botany is once again being given more prominence as a discipline because of its enormous relevance to both conservation and sustainable development. Those people involved in those topics shOUld find this a most useful resource.

"Provides vivid information about the history of plant exploration, migration, domestication, distribution and crop improvement"--

For The Students of B.Sc. , M.Sc. and Competitive Examinations

A unique, unified and a single source laboratory handbook; providing handy analytical procedures on the gamut of important, diagnostic medicinal and economic plant chemicals. More than 300 experiments on about 70 groups of phytochemicals in about 100 important plants are explained in an understandable way. A brief review on the chemistry, various types of extraction, solvents used and important analytical instruments are specified in the beginning of the book. The experiments range from simple paper and TLC chromatographic procedures to advanced GC and HPLC methods, therefore, the experiments can be easily selected depending on the availability of instruments with oneself. This book will be a valuable handbook for all the ayurvedic and herbal manufacturers throughout the world for their quality control procedures; and for courses on biochemistry, botany, pharmacy, biotechnology and organic chemistry. This can also serve as a reference book for phytochemistry, economic botany, medicinal plants and researchers.

This one-semester text is designed for an upper level botany course. Plants in our World emphasizes how people use plants; including fundamental information on morphology, anatomy, and taxonomy as a foundation of general botany. Now in full color, the fourth edition includes molecular data that has immensely altered the understanding of relationships among flowering plants and recently pinpointed the origin of numerous crops. Taxonomy of species has been updated to discuss the system of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group.