New Zealand Journal of Botany abstracts

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Embryological studies on economic plants

N. Prakash

Department of Botany, University of New England, Armidale, N.S.W. 2351, Australia

Abstract Since embryological processes have a definite bearing on man's health and wealth, a plea is made for the inclusion of embryology in agriculture and forestry curricula. Compared to plants in general, where at best only 15% of the genera are investigated, there is work on nearly 45% of the genera of economic plants and 20% of the species. However, far too many papers are superficial and/or deal with only one of several aspects in detail. Reasonably complete embryological descriptions are available for less than 10% of species. Embryology remains the least intensely explored morphological discipline because even under ideal conditions a thorough study of a single species could take between 1 and 5 years. The time factor can be considerably reduced by using new and improved techniques. Included in this review are 720 species of angiosperms all of which yield economic products obtained directly as a result of embryological processes, e.g., cereals, pulses, beverages, oils, edible fruits and vegetables. Suggested guidelines for future work include: study of all economic species and wild relatives that have not yet been investigated embryologically, reinvestigation of most other species with a view to cover at least those aspects that are not studied before, making as comprehensive a study as possible touching upon all the points which are considered taxonomically important - including the structure and development of the fruit wall and seed coat, and noting time intervals between chief embryological events.

New Zealand Journal of Botany, 1979, Vol. 17:525-34

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (923K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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