and United States of America. The infonnation compiled represents the state of the art of research in phmt cold hardiness in tenns of gene regulation, gene expression, signal transduction, the physiology of cold hardiness and, ultimately, the genetic engineering for cold tolerant plants.The International PCHS was initiated in 1977 at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota. It has been traditionally held at 5-year intervals at various locations. Because of the rapid advances of research in plant cold hardiness, attendees at the 6 th meeting unanimously adopted a resolution to hold the seminar in 3-year intervals instead of 5 in the future. Consequently, the next seminar will be held in 2004 in Sapporo, Japan, and Professor Seizo Fujikawa from Hokkaido University will serve as the host.As always, the overall goal of the seminar is to update the research findings and to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas among scientists with diverse disciplines who are actively engaged in studying plant freezing and chilling stress. The chapter authors are researchers who have made significant contributions to the knowledge of plant cold hardiness. It is our sincere hope that this volume will provide readers with the most recent advances in plant cold hardiness research since the ·1997 proceedings, Plant Cold Hardiness: Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Physiology, which was compiled from the presentations at the 1996 seminar.We wish to thank the following for their financial support of the 6 th seminar: Biocenter