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Deserts appear very fascinating during our short visits. However, the lives of plants and animals are very dif?cult under the harsh climatic conditions of high tempe- ture and scant water supply in deserts, sometimes associated with high concent- tions of salt. The editor of this book was born and brought up in the Great Indian Desert, and has spent much of his life studying the growth and metabolism of desert plants. It is very charming on a cool summer evening to sit at the top of a sand dune listening only to blowing air and nothing else. It has been my dream to prepare a volume on desert plants encompassing various aspects of desert plant biology. In this book, I have tried to present functional and useful aspects of the vegetation resources of deserts along with scienti?c input aimed at understanding and impr- ing the utility of these plants. The scant vegetation of deserts supports animal life and provides many useful medicines, timber and fuel wood for humans. Therefore, there are chapters devoted to medicinal plants (Chap. 1), halophytes (Chaps. 13, 14), and fruit plants (Chaps. 17, 20). Desert plants have a unique reproductive biology (Chaps. 9-11), well-adapted eco-physiological and anatomical charact- istics (Chap. 7), and specialised metabolism and survival abilities. These plants are dif?cult to propagate and pose many problems to researchers developing biote- nological approaches for their amelioration (Chaps. 18-20).
List of contents
General Biology.- Biodiversity, Biology and Conservation of Medicinal Plants of the Thar Desert.- Potentiality of Hydrocarbon Yielding Plants for Future Energy and Chemicals.- Biology and Biotechnological Advances in Jatropha curcas - a Biodiesel Plant.- Biology of Annual Plants in Arid and Semi-Arid Desert Regions of China.- Soil Biology in Traditional Agroforestry Systems of the Indian Desert.- Aspects of Mycorrhizae in Desert Plants.- Anatomical Variations in the Woody Plants of Arid Areas.- Diversity and Conservation in the Cactus Family.- Reproductive Biology.- Reproductive Biology of Some Gum-Producing Indian Desert Plants.- Reproductive Biology of Cactaceae.- Parthenocarpy and Seed Production in Burseraceae.- Ecophysiological Studies.- Photosynthesis of C4 Desert Plants.- Polyamines and Plant Adaptation to Saline Environments.- Ecology of Inland Saline Plants.- Ecophysiology of Prosopis Species From the Arid Lands of Argentina: What Do We Know About Adaptation to Stressful Environments?.- Plant Growth Inhibitors From Mesquite (Prosopis juliflora).- Biotechnological Studies.- Genetic Variation in the Tunisian Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.).- Biology and Multiplication of Prosopis species Grown in the Thar Desert.- Biotechnology Advances in Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis).- Date Palm Cultivation in the Changing Scenario of Indian Arid Zones: Challenges and Prospects.- Runoff-Rainwater for Sustainable Desert Farming.- Biotechnological Approaches to Aphrodisiac Plants of Rajasthan, India.
