- Email: [email protected]
What's wrong with my grass?
update 13 Chan, M-T. et al. (1993) Agrobacterium mediated production of transgenic rice plant expressing a chimeric ~-amylase promoter/ #-glucuronidase gene, Plant Mol. Biol. 22, 491-506 14 Yang, J-S. et al. (1996) Transgenic papaya plants from Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of petioles of in vitro propagated multishoots, Plant Cell Rep. 15, 459-464 15 Yeh, S-D. and Port, J-C. (1996) Coat proteinmediated resistance to tomato mosaic virus in systemic and local lesion hosts, Plant Pathol. Bull. 5, 15-27 16 Yeh, S-D. and Chu, F-H. (1996) Production and evaluation of transgenic tobacco plants expressing the coat protein gene of passion fruit woodiness virus, Bot. Bull. Acad. Sin. 37, 181-190 17 Hsu, Y-H. et al. (1994) Satellite defense as a control strategy for cucumber mosaic virus, Plant Pathol. Bull. 3, 72-77 18 Lin, N-S. et al. (1996) The open reading frame of bamboo mosaic potex virus satellite RNA is not essential for its replication and can be replaced with a bacterial gene, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 93, 3138-3142 19 Shaw, J-F. and Sheu, J-R. (1992) Production of high-maltose syrup and high-protein flour from rice by an enzymatic method, Biosci. Biotechnol. Biochem. 56, 1071-1073
book reviews
What's wrong with my grass? Turfgrass Diseases: Diagnosis and Management (CD-ROM) by G.L. Schumann and J.D. MacDonald American Phytopathological Society Press, 1997. $295.00 (Windows 3.1 or Windows 95; Macintosh System 7.0.1) ISBN 0 89054 219 8
This interactive CD-ROM is 'designed to help commercial turfgrass managers, scientists and students find out what diseases affect their turfgrass and explain how to manage turfgrass problems'. I very 362
September1997,Vol.2, No.9
eagerly looked forward to seeing the product, and had actually ordered it a week before being asked to do this review. There are many good aspects of the CD-ROM, and much of these stem from the excellent Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases 1. In fact, so much of the material derives from this book that I was surprised that its authors were not also co-authors of the CDROM. Many of the photographs are the same, as are keys for turfgrass species and disease identification. Unfortunately, the transfer from book format to an interactive CD-ROM still requires some work. As the CD-ROM format is still rather novel, I had some colleagues and students look over the material. The overwhelming impression from everyone was that the graphics were very nice, but that there was too much straight text. One of the great advantages of presenting material on a computer screen is the ability easily to enhance the form of presentation. However, aside from pictures of diseases, the bulk of the information in this CDROM is presented as straight prose requiring scrolling to reach the end. There are some hypertext links that give the user more than a passive reading role, but these are limited. Other points that were made included that there is no bookmarking to allow one to hop back to a particular screen or location; there are limited search and index tools; some line drawings are too small on a 15-inch screen; there is no direct link between the turfgrass identification key and turfgrass diseases; the disease calendar is fixed for a single location, rather than being locally adaptable; the disease diagnosis steps are not linked; and the section on insects is disorganized. To be fair, some of these criticisms are based on expectations of multimedia. This product, which has a specific niche, cannot compete and should not be compared directly to the slick advertizing and interactive programs that can be seen on the World Wide Web. The content of this CDROM is basically sound, and most of the >350 images are very good. New information that was not presented in the Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases book includes diseases that may be confused. Except for a quibble that these lists are not always reciprocal (e.g. it states that Pythium blight may be confused with brown patch, but not vice versa), this is very good practical information. The disease pyramid in the disease management section is also a good basic plant pathology concept, and the slight amount of animarion gives it an extra punch. This CDROM can play a role in education, particularly in technology-enhanced lecture
rooms, and can also be a useful tool for turfgrass managers. At eight times the price, is the CD-ROM Turfgrass Diseases that much superior to the book Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases? Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is. Perhaps the next version will have a new format that incorporates some of the advantages of computer presentation, particularly giving the computer a role in filtering and cross-linking information that will make turfgrass disease diagnosis easier and more fun.
Tom Hsiang Guelph Turfgrass Institute, Dept of Environmental Biology, Universityof Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 (tel +1 519 824 4120; fax +1 519 837 0442; e-mail [email protected])
References 1 Smiley, R.W., Dernoeden, P.H. and Clarke, B.B. (1992) Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases (2nd edn), APS Press
Physiologists under stress Physiology of Plants Under Stress by E. T. Nilsen and D.M. Orcutt John Wiiey & Sons, 1996. £100.00 hbk (xii + 689 pages) ISBN 0 471 03152 6
In its simplest form, 'stress physiology' involves studying the interaction between plants and their environment. In this book, Nilsen and Orcutt have taken on the unenviable task of assimilating concepts in stress physiology derived from studies of both the performance of agricultural plants and the physiological characteristics that determine the distribution of native species. According to the authors, stress occurs whenever the environment causes enough change in physiology either to
© 1997 ElsevierScience Ltd
book reviews
What's wrong with my grass? Turfgrass Diseases: Diagnosis and Management (CD-ROM) by G.L. Schumann and J.D. MacDonald American Phytopathological Society Press, 1997. $295.00 (Windows 3.1 or Windows 95; Macintosh System 7.0.1) ISBN 0 89054 219 8
This interactive CD-ROM is 'designed to help commercial turfgrass managers, scientists and students find out what diseases affect their turfgrass and explain how to manage turfgrass problems'. I very 362
September1997,Vol.2, No.9
eagerly looked forward to seeing the product, and had actually ordered it a week before being asked to do this review. There are many good aspects of the CD-ROM, and much of these stem from the excellent Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases 1. In fact, so much of the material derives from this book that I was surprised that its authors were not also co-authors of the CDROM. Many of the photographs are the same, as are keys for turfgrass species and disease identification. Unfortunately, the transfer from book format to an interactive CD-ROM still requires some work. As the CD-ROM format is still rather novel, I had some colleagues and students look over the material. The overwhelming impression from everyone was that the graphics were very nice, but that there was too much straight text. One of the great advantages of presenting material on a computer screen is the ability easily to enhance the form of presentation. However, aside from pictures of diseases, the bulk of the information in this CDROM is presented as straight prose requiring scrolling to reach the end. There are some hypertext links that give the user more than a passive reading role, but these are limited. Other points that were made included that there is no bookmarking to allow one to hop back to a particular screen or location; there are limited search and index tools; some line drawings are too small on a 15-inch screen; there is no direct link between the turfgrass identification key and turfgrass diseases; the disease calendar is fixed for a single location, rather than being locally adaptable; the disease diagnosis steps are not linked; and the section on insects is disorganized. To be fair, some of these criticisms are based on expectations of multimedia. This product, which has a specific niche, cannot compete and should not be compared directly to the slick advertizing and interactive programs that can be seen on the World Wide Web. The content of this CDROM is basically sound, and most of the >350 images are very good. New information that was not presented in the Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases book includes diseases that may be confused. Except for a quibble that these lists are not always reciprocal (e.g. it states that Pythium blight may be confused with brown patch, but not vice versa), this is very good practical information. The disease pyramid in the disease management section is also a good basic plant pathology concept, and the slight amount of animarion gives it an extra punch. This CDROM can play a role in education, particularly in technology-enhanced lecture
rooms, and can also be a useful tool for turfgrass managers. At eight times the price, is the CD-ROM Turfgrass Diseases that much superior to the book Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases? Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is. Perhaps the next version will have a new format that incorporates some of the advantages of computer presentation, particularly giving the computer a role in filtering and cross-linking information that will make turfgrass disease diagnosis easier and more fun.
Tom Hsiang Guelph Turfgrass Institute, Dept of Environmental Biology, Universityof Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 (tel +1 519 824 4120; fax +1 519 837 0442; e-mail [email protected])
References 1 Smiley, R.W., Dernoeden, P.H. and Clarke, B.B. (1992) Compendium of Turfgrass Diseases (2nd edn), APS Press
Physiologists under stress Physiology of Plants Under Stress by E. T. Nilsen and D.M. Orcutt John Wiiey & Sons, 1996. £100.00 hbk (xii + 689 pages) ISBN 0 471 03152 6
In its simplest form, 'stress physiology' involves studying the interaction between plants and their environment. In this book, Nilsen and Orcutt have taken on the unenviable task of assimilating concepts in stress physiology derived from studies of both the performance of agricultural plants and the physiological characteristics that determine the distribution of native species. According to the authors, stress occurs whenever the environment causes enough change in physiology either to
© 1997 ElsevierScience Ltd