Foreword: 101 Reasons To Learn More Plant Biochemistry.

Photosynthetic organisms are the principal primary producers on Earth. Our dependence on these power plants is total. Our lifestyles, and the lifestyles of all other consumers in the food chain, derive from our positions with respect to these primary sources. In addition, green plants (I include algae under this term) provide the base for much of our civilization as we go about the business of deriving food, shelter, clothing, toys, tools, and medicines from them. A stable civilization requires a stable relationship between man and plants. In recent decades, it has become apparent that our collective lifestyles threaten the stability of this relationship. Ozone layer depletion, increased UV irradiation, desertification, topsoil loss, injury to long-established ecologies, monoculture cropping, and overfertilization are some of the stresses now placed on green plants. On an evolutionary time scale, the onset of these stresses is instantaneous. And because we do not know enough about green plants and their interactions with their environment to predict the effects of such stresses, we simply do not know what the net consequences of the green plants’ responses to these sudden changes will be. What we do know about green plants has grown remarkably in the last 50 years. Many aspects of this increase in knowledge are reviewed in this special issue of THE PLANT CELL. In this essay, I shall try to provide an introduction to the broader issues raised by the reviews.