Rainer Matyssek Book order

Articles of an international symposium take on the conflict of balancing different eco-physiological requirements of plants in the process sequence of resource allocation. Focus is on the trade-off between growth and stress defence with respective cost/benefit assessments. Growth is the precondition to ensuring competitive resource acquisition, and defence is the precondition to retaining these resources for the plant after incorporation. Recognizing the plant’s intensive exchange of resources with its abiotic and biotic environment, this integrated approach requires spatial and temporal process scaling. This is tested with regard to both the mechanistic and ecologically relevant clarification potential. The analysis of the process integration of the functional and structural plant and ecosystem-inherent biological organization levels (scales) is identified as the precondition for spatial and temporal pattern disclosure during the allocation sequence. These articles thereby achieve a new quality in a comprehensive, process-based, integrative understanding of “system biology”.

Plants use resources, i. e. carbon, nutrients, water and energy, either for growth or to defend themselves from biotic and abiotic stresses. This volume provides a timely understanding of resource allocation and its regulation in plants, linking the molecular with biochemical and physiological-level processes. Ecological scenarios covered include competitors, pathogens, herbivores, mycorrhizae, soil microorganisms, carbon dioxide/ozone regimes, nitrogen and light availabilities. The validity of the “Growth-Differentiation Balance Hypothesis” is examined and novel theoretical concepts and approaches to modelling plant resource allocation are discussed. The results presented can be applied in plant breeding and engineering, as well as in resource-efficient stand management in agriculture and forestry.