A survey instrument was sent to all doctorate-granting institutions and all institutions identified as offering doctorates in plant biology. Doctorate-granting institutions were identified using the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education General Information Surveys (HEGIS) listings. Responses were received from plant biology program representatives at 197 of 198 institutions (99 percent). A total of 154 institutions were identified as offering graduate training in plant biology. Questions that were included in the 1983 and 1989 questionnaires concerned these issues: (1) the number of full-time faculty, postdoctoral fellows/associates, Ph.D. recipients, and full-time graduate students in plant biology; (2) the departments involved in providing graduate instruction in plant biology and the number of plant biology faculty in each department; (3) the number of foreign graduate students and postdoctorates in plant biology; (4) the three major disciplines within plant biology for graduate student training, postdoctoral research and training, and faculty research; (5) faculty vacancies in plant biology; (6) disciplines with surpluses or shortages of positions in various employment categories; (7) the major sources of financial support for graduate students and postdoctorates; and (8) the amount and sources of outside funding for plant biology research. A new question was added in 1989 that asked what factors are limiting progress in plant biology. Also, new data were collected on faculty with bachelor's degrees from foreign institutions, and financial data separating Hatch funds from other outside sources of funds. Unless stated otherwise, all statistics presented in this report are results from the 1983 and 1989 surveys. In general, statistics in this report are presented both as overall totals and using four major categories: institutional control (public/private), research size (based on federally financed research and development expenditures in the life science), number of full-time plant biology faculty (based on responses to the questionnaires), and geographic region (Northeast, Central, Southeast, West). More detailed discussion of the research methodology and a copy of the 1989 survey questionnaire are included in Appendixes B and C respectively. (KR)