ABSTRACT
A chapter on lower plant developmental genetics may seem out of place in a handbook largely devoted to crop plants, but as the true complexity of physiological and developmental processes in higher plants becomes ever more apparent, simpler model systems that can aid in the discovery of such processes are worthy of inclusion. The relative simplicity of lower plants and ease of genetic analysis in the haploid state can make them a model system to rival even Arabidopsis thaliana for some aspects of flowering plant development. As genetic engineering of crop plants progresses beyond the addition of single, entirely foreign genes to the manipulation and addition of entire pathways, knowledge of the truly fundamental aspects of plant development, which can best be discovered in lower plants, is more important than ever.
