PREFACE

In its final form, the proceedings have been organized into chapters according to the papers main themes, alongside the appropriate posters. Short abstracts of lectures ( there were only one or two) were not included. For the sake of achieving readable text free of major errors, we lightly edited few of the papers (with the concent of the authors). We hope we did not distract from the quality of the papers, nor did we change the message the paper aimed to deliver. The symposium was unique in that it incorporated papers from lectures dealing with marketing of flowers. This added an additional, valuable dimension to our symposium.

The papers span an area in science which is a source of excitement and challenge to all of us. There were relatively more papers dealing with basic aspects of physiology and somewhat less papers aiming at practical solutions. this may reflect the fact that the 'whys' and 'hows' are far from being clear . The task lying ahead of us is to broaden the base of our knowledge. We need to open channels to other fields of science and be quick to test hypotheses as they appear and relate to our field.

Had we not had the support of the Flower Marketing Board of Israel, the symposium would have been less colourful. This is the moment to thank them once more, especially the general manager, Mr. Hillel Mintz. last but not least I would like to thank the members of the organizing committee: Dr. A. borochov, Prof. A.H. Halevy, Dr. Y. Mor, D. Schori, J. Tandler, T. Tirosh, indeed they should be applauded for their efforts.

Shimon Mayak