A new encyclopedic account of plant nutrition: broad, brilliant, but also flawed

In the age of Atkins and the South Beach diet, supermarket shelves overflowing with vitamin and mineral supplements, and an ever-increasing understanding of the link between diet and well-being, development of disease, and lifespan, few would doubt the fundamental importance of nutritional sci- ence. Yet, among plant biologists, the study of plant nutrition is considered esoteric and incidental by far too many. It should, of course, be evident that no measurement of bio- chemical activity, transcript abundance, or physiological re- sponse in plants is meaningful without a precise definition of how the organisms or tissue preparations under study were reared and treated nutritionally. For this reason, any modern treatise of the subject area of plant nutrition is a welcome, and necessary, addition to the bookshelves. Two leading authorities, professors E. Epstein and A. J. Bloom, have now added to this limited arsenal with the long- awaited second edition of Mineral Nutrition of Plants: Prin- ciples and Perspectives. The book is a valuable and thorough, albeit not perfect, account of the field and deserves adoption by libraries, ion transport researchers, and teachers of upper- level university courses of plant nutrition. The authors are highly acclaimed in the field, and readers benefit in particular from Epsteins's expertise in basic ion flux analysis and potassium and silicon relations, and Bloom's strong ecophysiological interests. The book is well written and makes an erudite and ulti- mately successful case for the fundamental importance of min- eral nutrition. A particular strength of the book lies in the thorough historical accounts that accompany each chapter. A clear philosophy penetrates that much is to be learned from experiments conducted by early workers. This approach is re- freshing against the matrix of increasingly ahistorical ap- proaches in much of modern science, and the approach is es- pecially appreciated by this referee. Fascinating statistics, ex- amples and analogies abound, and they make for an interesting read in an area that is not considered naturally captivating by many. The book is also attractively illustrated: the blend of representative tables and graphs, micrographs, and technical drawings of plant morphology, postulated ion transport mech- anisms, and plant culture systems is above the norm. The breakdown of topics is logical, although the discussion of the roles of individual nutrients and their deficiency symptoms is somewhat disjointed, and details have to be assembled from various chapters. Epstein and Bloom cover basic mineral nutrition, physiol-