The Lysenko affair was perhaps the most bizarre chapter in the history of modern science. For thirty years, until 1965, Soviet genetics was dominated by a fanatical agronomist who achieved dictatorial power over genetics and plant science as well as agronomy. "A standard source both for Soviet specialists and for sociologists of science."—American Journal of Sociology "Joravsky has produced . . . the most detailed and authoritative treatment of Lysenko and his view on genetics."—New York Times Book Review

The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists, even in the West, now claim that discoveries in the field of epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Seeking to get to the bottom of Lysenko’s rehabilitation in certain Russian scientific circles, Loren Graham reopens the case, granting his theories an impartial hearing to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate his claims. In the 1930s Lysenko advanced a “theory of nutrients” to explain plant development, basing his insights on experiments which, he claimed, showed one could manipulate environmental conditions such as temperature to convert a winter wheat variety into a spring variety. He considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics—which he called the “internalization of environmental conditions”—the primary mechanism of heredity. Although his methods were slipshod and his results were never duplicated, his ideas fell on fertile ground during a time of widespread famine in the Soviet Union. Recently, a hypothesis called epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has suggested that acquired characteristics may indeed occasionally be passed on to offspring. Some biologists dispute the evidence for this hypothesis. Loren Graham examines these arguments, both in Russia and the West, and shows how, in Russia, political currents are particularly significant in affecting the debates.

With contributions from over 70 international experts, this reference provides comprehensive coverage of plant physiological stages and processes under both normal and stressful conditions. It emphasizes environmental factors, climatic changes, developmental stages, and growth regulators as well as linking plant and crop physiology to the production of food, feed, and medicinal compounds. Offering over 300 useful tables, equations, drawings, photographs, and micrographs, the book covers cellular and molecular aspects of plant and crop physiology, plant and crop physiological responses to heavy metal concentration and agrichemicals, computer modeling in plant physiology, and more.

Plant Physiology: A Treatise, Volume VB: Analysis of Growth: The Responses of Cells and Tissues in Culture deals with the innate capacities for growth that reside in mature organs, tissues, and cells of higher plants. The book examines the various ways, normal and abnormal, in which surviving organs, tissues, or cells from plants may grow, metabolize, and develop. The text will be of value to botanists, horticulturists, and biologists.

The principal aim of Photosynthesis: Physiology and Metabolism is to provide final year undergraduates, graduate students and researchers with an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of photosynthetic carbon metabolism in plants, ranging from molecular to ecophysiological aspects. The book examines how CO2 is acquired by algae and by plants and is divided into three sections. The first section concentrates on the pathways (the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle and photorespiration, with particular emphasis on the enzyme ribulose bisphospate carboxylase/oxygenase, Rubisco) and the regulation of CO2 fixation. The second section deals with the fate of fixed carbon, in chapters on the synthesis of products, such as sucrose, starch, fructans and sugar alcohols, and with the regulation of cellular partitioning of carbon, including topics such as respiration and feedback regulation of photosynthesis by carbohydrates. The last section concentrates on the various problems that plants face in taking up CO2 from their environment, and how CO2 concentrating mechanisms operate in the algae and in plants with C4 photosynthesis and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism. The ecological significance of these mechanisms is also discussed.