This volume consists of two parts. Part 1 comprises 6 chapters concerning the principles and practice of tropical vegetable production (including site, topography, soils and water; site management, seeds and types of cultivars; support for farmers; crop preparation and management; reducing pre- and postharvest losses and marketing surpluses). In Part 2, the crops have been mainly dealt with according to their taxonomy as botanical families, either as single or groups of families per chapter. These include: Alliaceae; Cruciferae [Brassicaceae]; Cucurbitaceae; Solanaceae; Leguminosae; leafy vegetables; Araceae, Convolvulaceae, Dioscoreaceae, Euphorbiaceae; Andean tubers and roots and crops of the Lamiaceae and Apiaceae; and Gramineae [Poaceae] and Cyperaceae. Examples of the indigenous species which can be regarded as important sources of edible vegetative materials which are not dealt with in the main text have been listed in Appendix 1. Contact details of the main international research stations are provided in Appendix 2. This book has been written with the hope and purpose that it will be used by technical, college and university students during their studies of horticulture, crop production and agriculture; it is also for students on other allied courses and agriculturists who find themselves needing more vegetable-orientated information in the course of their professional activities. It is aimed to assist in the production of extension, advisory and research staff and officers who will be the core of trainers, advisors, researchers and extension workers in tropical and subtropical countries.

The tropics are the source of many of our familiar fruits, vegetables, oils, and spice, as well as such commodities as rubber and wood. Moreover, other tropical fruits and vegetables are being introduced into our markets to offer variety to our diet. Now, as tropical forests are increasingly threatened, we face a double-fold crisis: not only the loss of the plants but also rich pools of potentially useful genes. Wild populations of crop plants harbor genes that can improve the productivity and disease resistance of cultivated crops, many of which are vital to developing economies and to global commerce. Eight chapters of this book are devoted to a variety of tropical crops—beverages, fruit, starch, oil, resins, fuelwood, fodder, spices, timber, and nuts—the history of their domestication, their uses today, and the known extent of their gene pools, both domesticated and wild. Drawing on broad research, the authors also consider conservation strategies such as parks and reserves, corporate holdings, gene banks and tissue culture collections, and debt-for-nature swaps. They stress the need for a sensitive balance between conservation and the economic well-being of local populations. If economic growth is part of the conservation effort, local populations and governments will be more strongly motivated to save their natural resources. Distinctly practical and soundly informative, this book provides insight into the overwhelming abundance of tropical forests, an unsettling sense of what we may lose if they are destroyed, and a deep appreciation for the delicate relationships between tropical forest plants and people around the world.

General principles;cultivation of market vegetables.

It is an edited book with chapters written by multi-disciplinary specialists in their specific subject areas. It covers development of IPM components and packaging them for individual vegetable crops specifically targeted to tropical countries. Scientific background for IPM components or tactics will be included. There will be case studies of IPM packages developed and implemented in different countries. The concept of IPM has been in existence for the past six decades; however, a practical holistic program has not been developed and implemented for vegetable crops, in the developing countries. Currently the IPM adoption rate in the tropics is minimal and there is a need for implementation of IPM technologies that are environmentally safe, economical, and socially acceptable. We believe that adoption and implementation of IPM provided in this book will lead to significant reduction in crop losses and mitigate adverse impacts of pesticide use in the tropics. This book is an outcome 20 years of research, development and implementation of the IPM CRSP, a project supported by USAID and administered by Virginia Tech in several developing countries along the tropical belt in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. ​

Principles of Tropical Horticulture leads the reader through a background of environmental influences and plant physiology to an understanding of production and post-harvest systems, environmental adaptation techniques and marketing strategies. Focusing on the principles behind production practices and their scientific basis, rather than detailed biological traits of each crop, this text outlines successes and failures in practices to date and sets out how the quantity and quality of horticultural produce can improve in the future. Case studies are frequently used and chapters cover the production of vegetables, fruit and ornamental crops, including temperate zone crops adapted to grow in the tropics.