CRC Press Practical Manual on Plant Cytogenetics

Earlier books on the handling of plant chromosomes have not included many of the innovations in cytological techniques for many important crops that have become available in recent years, including information on associating genes with chromosomes. The aim of this book is to compile all the plant cytogenetic techniques, previously published in earlier books, into a laboratory manual. The first part of the book describes standard cytological techniques that are routinely used by students. The second part covers methods used for specific crops for which common cytological methods do not work satisfactorily. The third part discusses cytogenetic techniques (cytology and genetics) for physically locating genes on specific chromosomes. This novel book will be highly useful to students, teachers, and researchers as it is a convenient and comprehensive reference for all plant cytogenetic techniques and protocols.   Review "In my view, an easily understandable experimental protocol at the classroom level presented through this manual is likely to rejuvenate interest in this fascinating subject the world over for graduate students and teachers alike. I believe that this book should be a must in all the labs and classrooms interested in practicing chromosome techniques." -Umesh C. Lavania, Department of Botany, Lucknow University About the Author Ram J. Singh, PhD is a plant research geneticist in the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, Soybean/Maize Germplasm, Pathology, and Genetics Research Unit, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Singh received his PhD in Plant Cytogenetics under the guidance of a world renowned barley cytogeneticist the late Professor Takumi Tsuchiya from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Dr. Singh isolated monotelotrisomics and acrotrisomics in barley, identified them by Giemsa C- and N-banding techniques, and determined chromosome arm-linkage group relationships. Dr. Singh conceived, planned, and conducted excellent quality pioneering research related to many cytogenetic problems in barley, rice, wheat, and soybean and published in highly reputable national and international prestigious journals, including American Journal of Botany, Caryologia, Chromosoma, Critical Review in Plant Sciences, Crop Science, Euphytica, Genetic Plant Resources and Crop Evolution, Genetics, Genome, International Journal of Plant Sciences, Journal of Heredity, Plant Molecular Biology, Plant Breeding, and Theoretical and Applied Genetics. In addition, he summarized his research results by writing eighteen book chapters. Dr. Singh has presented research findings as an invited speaker at national and international meetings. He has edited a series entitled Genetic Resources, Chromosome Engineering, and Crop improvement. This series includes Grain Legumes (Volume 1), Cereals (Volume 2), Vegetable Crops (Volume 3), Oil Seed Crops (Volume 4), Forage Crops (Volume 5) and Medicinal Plants (Volume 6). Dr. Singh assigned genome symbols to the species of the genus Glycine and established genomic relationships among species by a cytogenetic approach. He constructed a soybean chromosome map, for the first time, based on pachytene chromosome analysis and established all possible twenty primary trisomics and associated eleven of the twenty molecular linkage maps to the specific chromosomes. Dr. Singh produced fertile plants with 2n = 40, 41, and 42 chromosomes, for the first time, from an intersubgeneric cross of soybean cv. “Dwight” (2n = 40) and Glycine tomentella, PI 441001 (2n = 78). The screening of derived lines shows that useful genes of economic importance from G. tomentella have been introgressed into soybean. He has U.S. patents on methods for producing fertile crosses between wild and domestic soybean species. His book Plant Cytogenetics (first edition, 1993; second edition, 2003; third edition, 2007) is an ample testimony to his degree of insight