Engineering Crops for Industrial End Uses

The development of reliable transformation systems for the major cereal and oilseed crops grown in the UK and Europe provides an opportunity to manipulate their composition and properties to develop new end uses.

This will provide an outlet for agricultural surpluses, but, more importantly, it will allow the replacement of products derived from fossil fuels with those derived from plants, a renewable resource.

Plant-derived products also have the advantage of being biodegradable and biocompatible.

This volume provides an account of work in this area and includes both high-volume, low-cost products such as plastics and starches, and high-value, low-volume products such as pharmaceuticals.