Plant Science 158 (2000) 183 – 184
Book review
www.elsevier.com/locate/plantsci
Global Plant Genetic Resources for Insect Resistant Crops, Edited by Stephen L. Clements and Sharron S. Quisenberry, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1999. ISBN 0-8493-2695-8, DM 216.00, US$123.45
This is a well presented reference book for researchers engaged in developing insect control strategies for crops and is particularly aimed at plant breeders, entomologists and biotechnolo-gists. With the current boom in transgenic re-search and commercialization of plants which have acquired new properties (particularly insect resistance) through gene transfer, this book re-minds us that there is a large repertoire of such properties residing in various crops and their wild relatives. The list of germplasm collections and the various studies on insect-plant interactions that are described here in the different chapters will be very useful for anyone searching for new genes or looking for alternate strategies for insect control. The editors have done a marvellous job of se-lecting the right crops for the discussions in this book. They have divided the book into sections dealing with different classes of crops — cereals (rice, wheat, barley, sorghum), legumes (bean, soy-bean, alfalfa, cool season food legumes like chick-pea, dry chick-pea, lentil etc.), vegetables and root and tuber crops. The last two chapters deal with com-mon themes, one on the importance of germplasm conservation as a tool for studying insect-plant interactions and the other on the application of biotechnological tools like gene transfer for insect control.
The foreword by Masa Iwanaga is an excellent essay on the economics of stress damage (biotic and abiotic) of which insect damage causes the greatest loss, the need for ensuring future food security and the importance of integrated pest management. It stresses the need for increasing yield and reducing losses as a combined strategy to tackle the threatening ‘food insecurity’. It also
describes how we came to have such serious insect problems: the balance between the plants and insects in the field were upset because of the increasing tendency towards monoculture caused by the development of high yielding varieties which often sacrificed other qualities like pest and disease resistance. With little biodiversity in culti-vated crops, reduced crop rotation and increased use of pesticides, populations of insects developed that were resistant to these chemical pesticides and could devastate the selected crop. We strongly recommend this foreword to young researchers starting their work on insect control strategies as well as to those who blindly oppose genetically modified organisms, for it will clarify to them the need for all kinds of different strategies for ensur-ing future food security.
The first chapter on rice is particularly informa-tive, giving a global perspective of rice cultivation and listing of worldwide germplasm collections. The various insect problems of rice are discussed with reference to different geographic locations like West Africa, Asia and the Americas. A bal-anced view is presented with discussions on vari-ous biotechnological tools that can be applied — tissue and anther culture, wide hybridizations, gene transfer strategies, marker assisted selection etc. There is an emphasis on integrated pest man-agement throughout the book and this helps drive home the message that no single strategy will work on a long-term basis for insect control in the field. Each section discusses in great detail the various insects that are economically important for the crop in question; it also describes the germplasm collections available. This book covers most of the important food crops and the information pro-vided is very useful for a graduate student. The last chapter discusses the various candidate genes that have been used in gene transfer approaches for insect control.
It would have been very useful for students and
Book re6iew
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researchers entering this field if photographs and/or drawings of many of the insects described were included in this book. The message of this book is the need to look at the germplasm col-lections before finalizing a strategy for insect control in plants. A very useful addition to the library.
George Thomas,
Shantaram Bharadwaj
Centre for Biotechnology,
SPIC Science Foundation, 111 Mount Road,
Guindy, Chennai,
Madras 600 032,
India
E-mail: [email protected]
