Induced or acquired resistance to disease in plants has been known for many years, but the phenomenon was studied in only a few laboratories until about a decade ago. Since then, there has been an increasing interest in induced resistance as a new, environmentally safe means of disease control, as well as a model for the study of the genes involved in host defence and the signals that control them.
This increased interest led the editors of Induced Resistance to Disease in Plants to collect and summarise much of the current and older literature on the topic in a single...