Biology of Floral Scent

As with nearly all living creatures, humans have always been attracted and intrigued by floral scents. Yet, while we have been manufacturing perfumes for at least 5000 years to serve a myriad of religious, sexual, and medicinal purposes, until very recently, the limitation of our olfactory faculty has greatly hindered our capacity to clearly and objectively measure scent. Today, thanks to advances in practical methodologies and affordable instrumentation, we are now able to collect, separate, and identify volatile compounds with aromatic impact.

These advances are leading to much intensive investigation that has already resulted in many highly insightful and useful discoveries. Biology of Floral Scent provides the first comprehensive treatment of the biology of floral scents. It reviews the impressive research being done across several disciplines, incorporating molecular biology, enzymology, chemistry, entomology, genetic engineering, and functional genomics.

Organized into a single volume for the first time, this landmark work covers every major aspect of floral scent research including-Function and significance in the interactions between plants and pollinators Composition and enzymologyEvolutionary aspectsCommercial applications, including the use of recently identified scent genes to genetically engineer flowers to produce new scentsMeeting the needs of plant scientists, cell and molecular biologists, natural product chemists, pharmacognosists, and entomologists, as well as students in these fields, this work provides the background, findings, and insight that will stimulate new research to further advance an understanding of floral scent biology.