Trends in Plant Biotechnology

This book explains the advancements of plant biotechnology and advanced molecular biology and explores the details of influential tools that complement conventional breeding and accelerate the development of plants resilient to adverse agroclimatic conditions and biofortified plants. Plant biotechnology from the basic sciences to current applications, such as pathway engineering, precursor feeding, transformation, elicitation with biotic and abiotic elicitors, and scaling up in bioreactors, have been included in these chapters to improve the production of secondary metabolites from different medicinal plants. It also highlights important factors often overlooked by methodologies used to develop plants' tolerance against biotic and abiotic stresses and in developing special foods, bio-chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. This book is valuable for researchers or students working on biosciences. It is also an updated and advanced reference material for the agriculture and pharmaceutical industries. 

Dr. Siddra Ijaz

Centre of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan

Dr. Siddra Ijaz, with a vibrant career in agriculture and biotechnology, has a Ph.D. from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan, and a Post-Doc from the Plant Reproductive Biology Laboratory, University of California Davis, USA. She is an Associate Professor at the Center of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology (CABB), University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. She is also serving as Deputy Managing Editor of an international Impact factored Journal, Pakistan Journal of Agricultural Sciences. She has supervised more than 60 M.Phil and Ph.D. students. She was a National Curriculum Revision Committee member from 2013 to 2014. She has published over 50 articles, 09 books, 01 laboratory manual, and several book chapters. She is the Incharge of "Molecular Biology of Plant Disease Resistance Laboratory", CABB, UAF. She is the curator of the Fungal Molecular Biology Laboratory Culture Collection (FMB-CC-UAF) and an affiliated member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC). Her research focuses on plant biotechnology, including genomics, genome probing for identifying disease resistance genes, genome engineering for fungal disease resistance in plants, and disease management through nanobiotechnology.

Dr. Imran Ul Haq

Department of Plant Pathology, University of Agriculture, University Road, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan

Dr. Imran Ul Haq, with a bright career in agriculture, plant pathology, and fungal molecular biology, has Post-Doc from University of California Davis, USA. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has supervised more than 40 graduate students and established Fungal Molecular Biology Laboratory Culture Collection (FMB-CC-UAF), an affiliated member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC). He has published more than 60 articles, 08 books, 04 laboratory manuals and several book chapters. He has made colossal contributions in fungal taxonomy by reporting novel species of a fungal pathogen in plants. His research interests are fungal molecular taxonomy and nanotechnology integration with other control strategies for sustainable plant disease management.

Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia