Edited by Teus J. C. Luijendijk, Phytoconsult, Leiden, The Netherlands. 

Congress Proceedings. In July 1999, the congress "2000 Years of Natural Products Research - Past, Present and Future" was held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In this fifth joint meeting of international societies of pharmacognosy and phytochemistry (American Society of Pharmacognosy, ASP, Association Française pour l'Enseignement et la Recherche en Pharmacognosie, AFERP, Gesellschaft für Arzneipflanzenforschung, GA & Phytochemical Society of Europe, PSE), a large number of participants from all over the world discussed the latest achievements in the field of natural products research. Lectures held by the invited speakers have now been published in a separate publication.
The articles deal with the state of the art in natural products research, a reflection upon what has been achieved thus far and an outlook into the future. A wide variety of the aspects involved in natural products research is treated, e.g., traditional medicine, biodiversity, chemotaxonomy, industrial applications, biosynthetical pathways, analytical and separation techniques, high-throughput screening, the biological function and use by man of secondary metabolites, etc., etc. For an overview, see the table below.

Contents and Contributors
01. New biologically active compounds from African plants.· E. Dagne
02. Idiolites from microorganisms: a briljant past, a bright future.· L. Demain
03. Alkaloids. Past and present.· H. Guinaudeau
04. Botanical illustrations as information carriers in medicinal herbals: Oscillations between ornamental decoration and analytical necessity.· G. Harnischfeger
05. Natural products in perfumery and cosmetics.· D. Joulain
06. Recent advances in the chemistry of taxol.· D. G. I. Kingston
07. Salicylic acid- and nitric oxide-mediated signaling in plant-microorganism interactions.· D. F. Klessig et al.
08. Medicinal plant research in Latin America.· J. Lapa et al.
09. Plant biocommunicators: application of allelopathic studies.· F. A. Macías et al.
10. Anthocyanin modification in ornamental plants.· J. Mol
11. Biological activity and future directions for flavonoids.· P. W. Paré
12. Bioactive natural products from tropical forests.· V. Reutrakul et al.
13. The future of phytochemistry in the new millennium.· J. Vlietinck
14. Structure and function of bioactive polysaccharides from medicinal plants - present and future.· H. Yamada

Published by Phytoconsult,
P.O. Box 11 113, 2301 EC Leiden, The Netherlands.
Hardbound, ISBN: 90-805866-1-7 2000, 256 pp.
NLG 130/ 59 Euro (including packaging & postage)
Tel: +31 71 527 4575
Fax: +31 71 527 4511