Jones and Bartlett and the American Society of Plant Biologists have teamed up for the second edition of Plants, Genes and Crop Biotechnology. This textbook is about plants, genes, food, and agriculture, and the changing relationships among them. It shows how agriculture is changing throughout the world and discusses the roles that genes and genetic engineering are playing in these changes.

The unique, interdisciplinary approach of this contemporary book has three underlying themes:
(1) that modern farming has become a scientific enterprise, manipulating the relationship between plants and their environments; (2) that scientists who manipulate plants can help solve some of the problems of increasing crop production; and (3) that agriculture must be carried out in a sustainable manner, ensuring the basis of food production for future generations.

The book grew out of a desire to teach plant biology in an agricultural context and to bridge the gap between basic and applied science. Basic botany textbooks seldom mention agriculture, let alone human nutrition. Agricultural textbooks describe plants and agricultural practices, but are often short on basic science. The authors also wanted to introduce their students to the ever changing relationship between people and their food source and to the notion that genetic engineering is one more step in that historic process.

This book could be used in existing introductory courses in plant biology, agriculture, or economic botany, whether aimed at science majors or non-majors. It is the hopes of the authors' that the text will allow instructors to create new courses that deal with the scientific and societal issues that are so important to all of us: our relation to our food supply, both locally and globally, and the role of biotechnology in this relationship. This is the economic botany of the future.