Produce hardy, high-yield vegetables with hybrid seeds!From the Preface, by Amarjit S. Basra: “The phenomenon of heterosis, also referred to as 'hybrid vigor,’underlies much of the improvement in crop yields achieved in the twentieth century. The exploitation of heterosis in crop production is of vital importance in facing the challenge of providing food and nutritional security for an ever-increasing human population.“The effective use of heterosis has fostered the development of a worldwide seed industry. Rapid advances in plant breeding and associated seed production technologies have served to enhance the competitiveness of hybrids by increasing crop and seed yield per hectare, reducing the costs involved, and improving seed quality.”Hybrid Seed Production in Vegetables: Rationale and Methods in Selected Crops will help crop scientists and growers increase the quality and yield of vegetables such as: cucumbers cabbage pumpkins squash peppers onions gourds and the fruits watermelon and winter melon. This valuable book provides up-to-date research about heterosis, cultivars, hybrids, and molecular markers to help you get the most quality and quantity out of your seeds. Containing suggestions and methods for overcoming male plant sterility, inbreeding, and challenges to pollination, Hybrid Seed Production in Vegetables will help you successfully breed hybrid plants to produce bountiful and healthy crops.

Get all the resource information you need on hybrid vegetable development—in one book! Discover the latest concepts in breeding and development of hybrid vegetables with Hybrid Vegetable Development. Respected authorities share their views on the most recent trends and the techniques used for hybrid vegetable development in various vegetable crops. This one book could become your comprehensive source for all aspects of breeding, development, and seed production. Hybrid Vegetable Development provides a huge volume of background information on eighteen of the most important world vegetable crops, including tomato, eggplant, hot pepper, bell pepper, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, onion, garden pea, and melons. Packed with helpful illustrations, diagrams, and tables, this book goes in-depth into hybrid development mechanisms, crop/floral biology, pollination control mechanisms genetics, breeding, and the exploitation of hybrid seed production on a commercial scale. Hybrid Vegetable Development covers: crop biology heterosis pollination control mechanisms hybrid seed production maintenance of inbred/pure lines seed production of major vegetables detailed descriptions of the mechanisms in hybrid vegetable development the status of transgenic vegetables Hybrid Vegetable Development is a valuable, comprehensive resource for agriculture industry experts and professionals, professors, and students.

With reference to India.

"Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural, rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, Kingsbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more reliable, productive, and nutritiousa story that owes as much to accident and error as to innovation and experiment. Drawing on historical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs and thus led us from sparse wild grasses to succulent corn cobs, and from mealy, white wild carrots to the juicy vegetables we enjoy today. At the same time, Kingsbury reminds us that contemporary controversies over the Green Revolution and genetically modified crops are not new, plant breeding has always had a political dimension."--Publisher's description.

Genetic improvement has played a vital role in enhancing the yield potential of vegetable crops. There are numerous vegetable crops grown worldwide and variable degrees of research on genetics, breeding and biotechnology have been conducted on these crops. This book brings together the results of such research on crops grouped as alliums, crucifers, cucurbits, leaf crops, tropical underground and miscellaneous. Written by eminent specialists, each chapter concentrates on one crop and covers cytology, genetics, breeding objectives, germplasm resources, reproductive biology, selection breeding methods, heterosis and hybrid seed production, quality and processing attributes and technology. This unique collection will be of great value to students, scientists and vegetable breeders as it provides a reference guide on genetics, breeding and biotechnology of a wide range of vegetable crops.