Food insecurity is a fundamental challenge to human welfare and economic growth in Africa. Low agricultural production leads to low incomes, poor nutrition, vulnerability to risk and threat and lack of empowerment. This book offers a comprehensive synthesis of agricultural research and development experiences from sub-Saharan Africa. The text highlights practical lessons from the sub-Saharan Africa region.

This book covers the most recent advances in all the topics with which researchers and professionals need to be familiar in order to obtain a better understanding of, and to better exploit, beneficial plant-microbe interactions. The use of microorganisms for agriculture and environmental applications is gaining importance worldwide to improve crop performance, but also for other environmental applications, such as bioremediation in chemically polluted soils. The search for an equilibrium between fundamental and applied aspects makes this book useful for professionals at various levels in the value chain of the “microbial biofertilizers”. Challenges of comercializing biofertilizers involve efficiency of the products and safety for human health and the environment, topics that have paid central attention in this book. Students, scientists and biofertilizers developers will find updated and comprehensive information about the different aspects to be considered to address a successful introduction of biofertilizers in sustainable agriculture and environmental actions.

Written in easy to follow language, the book presents cutting-edge agriculturally relevant plant biotechnologies and applications in a manner that is accessible to all. This book introduces the scope and method of plant biotechnologies and molecular breeding within the context of environmental analysis and assessment, a diminishing supply of productive arable land, scarce water resources and climate change. Authors who have studied how agro ecosystems have changed during the first decade and a half of commercial deployment review effects and stress needs that must be considered to make these tools sustainable.

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.