The Professional Association for Cactus Development (PACD) recognizes the valuable expertise of all its members—plant scientists, medical scientists, growers, ranchers, marketers, and chefs. Our goal is to foster meaningful dialogue among all aspects of development of the cactus industry. It is important for the growers to understand the needs of the buyers, for the scientists to understand the needs of the growers, and for the scientists to understand the relevance of market-driven economies in their research. The inputof a CEO of a company processing and marketing cactus products is as valuable as that of a scientist. As the views of all these sectors are absolutely vital to the growth of the cactus industry, it is essential for ourJournal to actively seek and publish the perspectives of both nonscientists and scientists involved with cactus.

Because the normal communication mode of the business, ranching, and culinary sectors is not that of a scientific paper and because both nonscientific and scientific inputs are very valuable to the body of knowledge for cactus, the Journal will strive to include many types of knowledge, each in the format traditional to its individual professional discipline.

The editors will vigorously seek written contributions for inclusion in our Journal from growers, marketers, legislators, and those involved in public policy. The editorial board will also review papers outside the scientific format for grammatical clarity and accuracy. The editorial board may request input from ranchers, chefs, and marketing specialists to verify the accuracy of nonscientific submissions.

The traditional mode of communication in science has been a refereed journal article with an introduction that briefly reviews the scientific literature, a materials and methods section, a results section, and a discussion section. Clearly, this mode of communication is essential to communication among scientists. Scientific papers will be peer reviewed in the normal process by a scientific editorial board using the traditional scientific review process.

The editors acknowledge that both field and laboratory data are vital to the development of our knowledge base for cactus. The editors also acknowledge the difficulty in field experiments with large perennial plants that may require many years to produce data. Cost factors in maintaining an adequate number of replications over long periods with wide spacing may be confounded with the necessity to conduct several types of experiments simultaneously. The editors will be sympathetic to these needs, and it will be the policy of our Journal to be as helpful as possible to extract precious data from all experiments.

In summary, the editors of the Journal of the Professional Association for Cactus Development, are very excited to be a part of the excellent editorial committee and to work together to create the synergism between scientists, growers, legislators, and business people so vital to the development of this industry to serve the people of arid lands.