This book arose from a meeting at Rothamsted Experimental Station in September 1993, sponsored by the Plant Metabolism Group of the SEB. It was one of several meetings, on a wide variety of topics, which helped to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rothamsted, which was founded by John Bennett Lawes in 1843. At that time, Lawes was involved in the commercial production of superphosphate fertilizer, and the experiments begun by Lawes and his co-worker Gilbert investigated many aspects of plant nutrition. That the conference (and this book) dealt with amino acids, end products of nitrogen assimilation in plants, is most appropriate considering the pioneering work of Lawes and Gilbert on plant nitrogen nutrition.

Amino acid biochemistry in plants has been a major topic of research at Rothamsted for more than 20 years, and many major advances have been made: the discovery of the glutamate synthase cycle for the assimilation of ammonia, the first description of the photorespiratory nitrogen cycle, and detailed genetic, biochemical and molecular analysis of these processes; the biochemistry and genetics of amino acid biosynthesis, particularly aspartate-derived amino acids; and most recently the biochemistry of amino acid-derived secondary metabolites. This work has involved many other researchers from laboratories all over the world, and it was a great pleasure to welcome so many past and present collaborators to the meeting, and to read of their latest work in the chapters of these proceedings.