The ninth edition of "Hartmann and Kester's Plant Propagation: Principles and Practices", edited by professor Bob Geneve and professor Sandra Wilson, has been published.
With more than 1,000 pages, the book's ninth edition covers a deceptively simple topic: plant propagation or how to grow plants.
"Plant propagation has played a key role in the evolution of human society," said Geneve, horticulture professor for the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
"Think about it: All the fruits, vegetables, and cereal grains you've ever eaten needed to be propagated. All the trees, shrubs, and flowers found around our homes also needed to be propagated," Geneve said. "We have all experienced propagating a plant from seed, and it seems so fundamentally simple, but there are many ways to propagate a plant, and the subtle complexities can be fascinating."
To understand how a little seed turns into a full-fledged plant, students and horticultural professionals need to know a lot of terminologies. The current editors of "Plant Propagation" developed a nearly 500-term online glossary called PropG as a supplement to the textbook or as a stand-alone tool.
"It's sort of like Wikipedia in that you can go down a plant propagation rabbit hole," Wilson said with a laugh. Wilson is a professor of environmental horticulture at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS).
The original "Plant Propagation: Principles and Practices" was published in 1959 by Hudson Hartmann and Dale Kester, both professors at the University of California, Davis. Over the years, the book expanded to stay current with the latest research and techniques. The text covers the evolution of plant propagation in human society, propagation by seed, plant tissue culture, cuttings, grafts, and division, as well as specific propagation protocols for fruits, nuts, trees, and ornamental annuals and perennials.
For more information:
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
www.ifas.ufl.edu