Cowpea: taxonomy, genetics, and breeding, physiology and agronomy, diseases and parasitic weeds, insect pests, postharvest technology and utilization. Biotechnological applications.

Pulses, Sugar and Tuber Crops comprises reviews contributed by 47 eminent scientists from 10 countries. The chapters on common bean, pea, cowpea, sugarcane and potato include comprehensive reviews of voluminous research findings. Fundamental aspects and molecular results are also presented for eight ‘orphan crops’ of high agroeconomic importance including mungbean, lentil, chickpea, lathyrus, pigeonpea, sweet potato, cassava and yam. works on quinoa and Bambara groundnut are reviewed for the first time.

This book focuses on food security and safety issues in Africa, a continent presently challenged with malnutrition and food insecurity. The continuous increase in the human population of Africa will lead to higher food demands, and climate change has already affected food production in most parts of Africa, resulting in drought, reduced crop yields, and loss of livestock and income. For Africa to be food-secure, safe and nutritious food has to be available, well-distributed, and sufficient to meet people’s food requirements. Contributors to Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives offer solutions to the lack of adequate safe and nutritious food in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as highlight the positive efforts being made to address this lack through a holistic approach. The book discusses the various methods used to enhance food security, such as food fortification, fermentation, genetic modification, and plant breeding for improved yield and resistance to diseases. Authors emphasize the importance of hygiene and food safety in food preparation and preservation, and address how the constraints of climate change could be overcome using smart crops. As a comprehensive reference text, Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives seeks to address challenges specific to the African continent while enhancing the global knowledge base around food security, food safety, and food production in an era of rapid climate change.

This book examines the development of innovative modern methodologies towards augmenting conventional plant breeding, in individual crops, for the production of new crop varieties under the increasingly limiting environmental and cultivation factors to achieve sustainable agricultural production, enhanced food security, in addition to providing raw materials for innovative industrial products and pharmaceuticals. This is Vol 7, subtitled Legumes, focuses on advances in breeding strategies using both traditional and modern approaches for the improvement of individual legume crops. Included in this volume are Adzuki bean, Black gram, Chickpea Cluster bean, Common bean, Cowpea, Faba bean, Hyacinth bean, Lentil, Mung bean, Pigeonpea and Soybean. This volume is contributed by 57 internationally reputable scientists from 9 countries. Each chapter comprehensively reviews the modern literature on the subject and reflects the authors own experience.

While preparing the first edition of this textbook I attended an extension short course on writing agricultural publications. The message I remember was "select your audience and write to it. " There has never been any doubt about the audience for which this textbook was written, the introductory course in crop breeding. In addition, it has become a widely used reference for the graduate plant-breeding student and the practicing plant breeder. In its prepa ration, particular attention has been given to advances in plant-breeding theo ry and their utility in plant-breeding practice. The blend of the theoretical with the practical has set this book apart from other plant-breeding textbooks. The basic structure and the objectives of the earlier editions remain un changed. These objectives are (1) to review essential features of plant re production, Mendelian genetic principles, and related genetic developments applicable in plant-breeding practice; (2) to describe and evaluate established and new plant-breeding procedures and techniques, and (3) to discuss plant breeding objectives with emphasis on the importance of proper choice of objec tive for achieving success in variety development. Because plant-breeding activities are normally organized around specific crops, there are chapters describing breeding procedures and objectives for the major crop plants; the crops were chosen for their economic importance or diversity in breeding sys tems. These chapters provide a broad overview of the kinds of problems with which the breeder must cope.

About neglected crops of the American continent. Published in collaboration with the Botanical Garden of Cord�ba (Spain) as part of the Etnobot�nica92 Programme (Andalusia, 1992)

The burgeoning demand on the world food supply, coupled with concern over the use of chemical fertilizers, has led to an accelerated interest in the practice of precision agriculture. This practice involves the careful control and monitoring of plant nutrition to maximize the rate of growth and yield of crops, as well as their nutritional value.