Reproductive Versatility in the Grasses

This text brings together, for the first time on a world basis, a detailed review by acknowledged authorities of grass reproductive biology. Grasses are our most important plants whether for agriculture or conservation. The volume includes a computer-based approach to the grass family (Poaceae) and a comprehensive treatment of the spikelet in all its major modifications. Grass ovule development and diversity is described followed by an ultrastructural analysis of fertilisation. Forms of apomixi and their evolutionary significance are explored preceding a treatment of population genetics. Essential to contemporary awareness of grasses is an understanding of their role in sustaining ecologically fragile environments, and the relative importance of annual and perennial reproduction is examined here with particular reference to indigenous dryland grasses marginal to major deserts. Molecular biology and tissue culture allow us to intervene in reproductive systems and the issues include a fundamental revision of the concept of double fertilisation grass pollen in relation to human allergy and the prospects for developing wheat male sterility. The book concludes with an overview of some contrasted grasses, the bamboos, dryland grasses and cereals partly to assess how far evolution of the grass is coming under human control.