History and evolution. Resource and crop management. Crop improvement. Plant health management. Looking ahead.

In their comprehensive paper, Montague Yudelman, Annu Ratta, and Davi Nygaard examine the key issues with regard to pest management and food production over the coming decades. They draw attention to the lack of adequate information on the magnitude and impact of pest losses; without such information, policymarkers are handicapped when devising strategies for meeting food needs. The authors address both chemical and nonchemical approaches to pest management, highlighting the importance of biotechnology. There is growing public sentiment against biotechnology but little appreciation as yet of its contributions to alleviating hunger by, among other things, controlling pest losses. The authors also address the important subject of the roles of different actors in pest management, most notably the private sector.

Developing countries are under pressure to produce more food for their growing populations, conserve natural resources, and reduce poverty. In the short term, however, these goals may compete with one another. This book focuses on the interactions between agricultural growth and environment and between environment and poverty. The chapters analyze and illustrate these interactions with case study evidence from the developing world in general and from specific agroclimatic zones in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The contributors also discuss what these links mean for development policies, agricultural technologies, and social and economic institutions. With a clearer picture of how these goals interact, policymakers and researchers can design strategies for working more effectively to meet them.

Need for biotechnology research in Africa; Enhancing the genetic base; Cell and tissue culture; Controlled gene manipulation; Using molecular markers; Other selected applications of biotechnology; Policy issues.