Practical Plant Virology

The idea for this book arose from what we perceived as the need for an up-to-date guide to class exercises in plant virology. We were encouraged to proceed after receiving 29 positive responses (out of 30 replies to our enquiries) from colleagues worldwide. To the best of our knowledge, no such publications have appeared since D. Noordam's book containing practical exercises (Noordam 1973) and the latest (1988) edition of the American Phytopathological Society's Laboratory Exercises in Plant Pathology, in which 4 out of its 31 chapters discuss plant viruses. Our original plan was to aim this publication at students and teachers of plant virology, plant pathology, plant breeding and microbiology. How- ever, both colleagues and our publisher suggested widening the scope of the book by making it useful also for research workers and laboratory technicians. Therefore, we decided to prepare a laboratory manual of interest to all groups. We have tried to cover all relevant branches of plant virology, including the molecular aspects, in as far as they pertain to the detection and basic characterisation of plant viruses. We have not included protocols for the molecular biology of plant viruses (sequencing, construction of recombi- nants, transgenic plants, etc.), as they are presented adequately in many other recent publications. The protocols in this book are described in a manner which should be understandable to those with a basic knowledge of biology and chemistry.