Compendium of Crop Genome Designing for Nutraceuticals

The crop plants cater not only to our basic F5 (food, feed, fiber, fuel, and furniture) needs but also provide a number of nutraceuticals with potential nutritional, safety and therapeutic effects. Many crop plants provide an array of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidant-rich bioactive phytochemicals. Increasing incidences of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and HIV, and malnutrition necessitate global attention to health and nutrition security with equal emphasis to food security. This compendium complies research on biochemical, physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying biosynthesis of the health and nutrition related nutraceuticals. It also explores the precise breeding strategies for augmentation of their content and amelioration of their quality in crop plants under all commodity categories including cereals and millets, oilseeds, pulses, fruits and nuts, and vegetables. The compendium comprise 5 sections dedicated to these 5 commodity groups and presents enumerationon the concepts, strategies, tools and techniques of nutraceutomics. These sections include 60-plus chapters devoted to even number of major crop plants. These chapters’ present deliberations on the biochemistry and medicinal properties of the nutracuticals contained; genetic variation of their contents; classical genetics of and breeding for their quantitative and qualitative improvement; tissue culture and genetic engineering for augmentation of productivity and quality; and sources of genes underlying their biosynthesis.  They also include comprehensive enumeration on genetic mapping of the genes and QTLs controlling the contents and profile of the nutraceuticals and molecular breeding for their further improvement through marker assisted selection and backcross breeding tools. Prospects of post-genomic precise targeted breeding strategies including genome-wide association mapping, genomic selection, allele mining and genome editing are also discussed.  This compendium fill the gap in academia and research and development wings of the private sector industries and will also facilitate understanding of the policy making agencies and people in the socio-economic domain and benefit students, teachers, scientists, policy makers and sponsoring agencies involved in an array of subjects including genetics, genomics, tissue culture, genetic engineering, molecular breeding, genomics-assisted breeding, bioinformatics, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, entomology, pharmacognosy, IPR, etc.

Prof. Chittaranjan Kole is an internationally reputed scientist with an illustrious professional career of spanning over thirty-seven years and original contributions in the fields of plant genomics, biotechnology, and molecular breeding leading to the publication of more than 160 quality research articles and reviews. He has edited over 150 books for the leading publishers of the world. His scientific contributions and editing acumen have been appreciated by seven Nobel Laureates including Profs. Norman Borlaug and Arthur Kornberg. He has been honored with a number of Fellowships, Honorary Fellowships, and national and international awards including the Outstanding Crop Scientist Award conferred by the International Crop Science Society. He has served at all prestigious positions in academia including as Vice-Chancellor of BC Agricultural university, and Project Coordinator of Indo-Russian Centre of Biotechnology in India, and Director of Research of Institute of NutraceuticalResearch of Clemson University, in USA. He worked also in the Pennsylvania State University and Clemson University as Visiting Professor in USA. He is also heading the International Climate-Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium and International Phytomedomics and Nutriomics Consortium as their founding Principal Coordinator and President.